


Titanomachy

by Donna_Immaculata, ElDiablito_SF



Series: The Fabulous Adventures in Immortality of the Vampire Aramis and the Man Who Named the Mountain, Volume VI [1]
Category: Christian Bible (New Testament), Greek and Roman Mythology, Les Trois Mousquetaires | The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
Genre: Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Apocalypse, Biblical References, Blasphemy, Character Death, Do we really need to tag for sibling sex? We think not, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Postmodernism, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-15
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-02-02 17:21:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 93,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12730956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Donna_Immaculata/pseuds/Donna_Immaculata, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/pseuds/ElDiablito_SF
Summary: The Titans are awakened as prophesied.  Will true love survive the apocalypse?





	1. Gaia

**Author's Note:**

> Here we are, in what is officially Volume VI of Immortality AU (Volume V being a placeholder for all our missing scenes)! If you haven't read the first 4 volumes, we recommend you do so. If you have read the first 4 volumes, then you are Audience, and you have your armor on! We love you.
> 
>  

Inwards, through the darkness, the Mother crawled. Through the soot that came out of her pores, through the rambling roots and the sighing stones. With her all-seeing eye blinded and shut, into the darkness she moaned. Off of her axis she spun, through the celestial nebula, like Ixion on his wheel, endlessly she rolled. Spitting tar and pitch through her teeth, and rending her hair, she crawled.

 _Ingrates_.

She opened her mouth and words fell like stones, like claws upon metal, and slow to roll forth like the tide. They dashed and broke against her belly’s void. The Devouring Mother.

_Where once I ran with rivers of life, my blood runs to poison. Where once waters viridian ran, now vermillion drips, jaundiced and rusted it seeps. Where once I gave the kiss of breath, my own breath is frozen. Where the birds used to sing all I hear is a moan without end. And the forests all tumble, and the mountains all rumble, and it’s lava and fire that I bled._

Thus she spake and she shook her old shoulders, and her sighs radiated like light. From the trenches of Mariana to the tops of Carpathia, and the very golden crown of Olympus, all trembled at her coming. And her voice rose from below to touch the flickering tongues of Helios and capture the Winds in her thrall. Thus bleeding and weeping she moaned.

_I am overrun with the pestilence of Man, while you lie becalmed, indolent, here in my very womb. I am overrun. Remember your promise. The time has come. Protect your own Mother._

A spark, a stir within Her very core. An echo of a war millions years old. The children of the Earth and the Sky shall sleep no more.

 _Arise,_ she beckoned.

_Arise!_

**_ARISE!_ **

 

**Madagascar, autumn 2017**

Through the cacophony of early morning bird shrieks, through the swirling mists of dawn, a man strode on silent cat-feet. With his broad shoulders and his smooth gait, he was the predator before whom the jungle cowers. It was therefore surprising to hear him being addressed in civilised tones:

“Good morning.” The word rose in mellow tones from an invisible source. The man reached his companion, whose silhouette surfaced from within the milky whiteness of fog as he stood very still and silent with his back to the newcomer, one arm behind his back, the other outstretched towards the thicket. A creature crouched on a branch, huge eyes gleaming like embers, sparse fur bristling, large bat-like ears flicking at the sound of approaching danger. A tail like a witch’s broom twitched, and the long twig that was its finger pointed slowly at the man before him.

“Is the demon trying to curse you?” There was laughter vibrating in the man’s voice as he stepped behind his companion and wrapped an arm around his waist. “He’s in for a surprise when you don’t drop dead, my chyortik.”

The chyortik moved his hand, gently, until the tip of his index finger brushed against the twig-like appendage of the tree demon. “They used to be powerful, Athos,” he said softly, leaning into the solid weight behind his back. “Now, they get beaten to death in their own kingdom, for no other reason that they are aye-ayes.”

“Harbingers of death,” Athos said. “You can’t blame humans for fearing them.”

“They haven’t been bringing death in centuries. They’ve grown weak as humans grew strong.” His finger caressed the lemur’s limb. “It’s humans who bring death these days, haven’t you noticed, my wise Olympian friend?”

“I bow before your superior knowledge of demonology, Aramis. But you know better than anyone that old habits die hard. Humans are hard-wired to fear the things their ancestors feared. And fear begets-”

“Violence.” The word darted out as a low hiss. The aye-aye flinched, but a higher power seemed to keep it tethered in place.

“Demons don’t die,” Athos said thoughtfully, moving his fingers in an absent-minded caress above the waistband of Aramis’ combats. He ducked his head and whispered into the other’s hair: “What are you planning?”

“I might have to perform an exorcism.”

“As our friend Marie would say: how charmingly anachronistic! To what end, M. l’abbé?”

“To the end of waking them,” Aramis said, and his voice was sweet and clear. “They tried hiding in the shadows to escape human attention, but that didn’t save them. Maybe it’s time they had their powers restored.”

“How is an exorcism going to effect that?”

A soft laugh. “Interestingly enough, it was one of the Malagasy shepherds who disclosed the secret to me. It’s so simple, Athos: the slumbering demon is like an animal living in isolation. It is calm, because nobody disturbs it. When somebody starts chasing it, it starts rushing around. This is how the demon acts in a living creature. It lies dormant, until exorcists start to cast it out; then, it stirs. And when it stirs-” His hand cut through the air in an elegant gesture, like the blessing of a bishop, and then alighted tenderly on the lemur’s head.

“You’re restless, Aramis.” The arm around Aramis’ waist tightened, lips and mouth fastened to the sliver of skin exposed above the shirt collar. “Be careful, my chyortik. Don’t meddle.”

A snarl; the lean body tautened like that of a jungle cat. “We tried not meddling, Athos. That didn’t exactly go well, did it? You left your post, Professor Thunderson, because you couldn’t bear living in the US after that… that…”

“Thing from the pits of Hell took over?”

“There’s no need to be rude. Hell is nowhere near as moronic. Nor as orange.”

“Again, I bow to your superior knowledge.” Athos pressed a kiss into Aramis’ neck. “There’s nothing we can do, my love,” he said, and the weight of millennia pressed down on his voice, and on his soul. “This is what humanity does. They go to war against others, and they go to war against themselves. Then, once they’ve done ripping themselves apart, they learn their lesson for a few decades. And then they start all over again. Trust me. I’ve been there before, I’ve seen this happen again and again-”

“You helped it happen, as Ares’ good little foot soldier.”

Athos sucked in a sharp breath, but he did not fall prey to the provocation.

“Yes. I helped it happen. Which is why I know what I’m talking about. I’m not going to get dragged into it again.”

Aramis whirled around. The aye-aye vanished among the orchids and ferns. “Your sister died,” he hissed. “She was murdered, Athos. Remember her? The wise one. The fully dressed one. Your only normal sibling.”

Athos’ eyes darkened with passion, but his will of iron persevered. “Don’t pretend you cared about her, Aramis,” and a note of danger crept into his voice.

“Not care about Athena?” Aramis flattened the palm of his hand against Athos’ chest, where the throb of his heart was strongest. “After six hundred years, you should be aware that I value wisdom, wherever I find it.”

Athos smiled, and it was the sad ancient smile of yore. “Even on Olympus?”

“Even there. Athena’s murder shook the entire world. The wave of stupidity that crashed over the world, Athos, when I think of it, it takes my breath away.”

“Still?”

Aramis threw his hands in the air. “They voted Leave!”

“And your answer is to bring the Old Ones back? Aramis, it won’t work. It has to run its course. Athena’s death was-” Athos bit his lip, “it was devastating, I grant you. But it was the Titans who killed her, not humans. It had nothing to do with humans, it was a precursor of the Titan uprising that was foretold to us. But that’s not going to erupt for centuries, perhaps millennia. Time passes differently in Tartarus.”

“I realise that,” Aramis said with waspish politeness. “I vividly remember you vanishing from the surface of the Earth for five years, leaving me to-”

“Pursue your ecclesiastical career,” Athos smiled. “You weren’t exactly pining, chyortik.”

“Don’t fish, Athos.”

“Very well. Let’s get back to the point, then. Despite your, for lack of a better word, affection for my sister, you made it abundantly clear that you don’t wish to side with my family, and I respect your wishes. Please respect mine in turn.”

“What if I’ve changed my mind?”

Athos raised his eyebrows. “You wish to join forces with the Olympians?”

“Don’t you?” Aramis stepped back and regarded Athos thoughtfully. “I would’ve thought that you’d jump to it, Discord. Olympian arm on Earth. Last of the demigods.”

“I’ve already told you: I’m willing to sit it out.”

Aramis snarled. “This is going to be Bragelonne all over again, isn’t it? Sitting it out. Unwilling to take charge, to control people’s fates.”

“I am not a Moira.”

“They might be your sisters. Considering who your father is, that’s quite likely.”

“What is it that you want, Aramis? Tell me, because I don’t understand what you’re planning to achieve.”

“I wish,” Aramis took a deep breath. “I wish to stop humanity from destroying everything they touch.”

“By raising demons?”

“If that’s what it takes.”

“They won’t destroy everything they touch, Aramis. They’ll be mauling each other for a while, and then they’ll come to their senses, diminished in numbers and hopefully a bit humbler than before. Until the cycle starts again.”

“We should’ve stopped them back then, before they banished the Old Ones.”

“When did the Old Ones become a panacea in your eyes?”

“They were part of creation. Removing them was like removing a predator from the ecosystem: it collapsed.”

“It hasn’t collapsed. Yet.” For a split second, a golden haze shimmered around Discord’s chest and shoulders, and the fires of Troy reflected in his eyes.

Aramis opened his mouth to speak and closed it again. His eyes darted to the path, where the mist parted and a tall, dark-haired, handsome man appeared, stepping over mud in immaculately polished boots.

“Good morning, sirs,” he said and held out a Smartphone. “A message from your cousin, Kyrios. I have to say it is pervaded by a certain urgency.”

 _Brethren!_ , the salutation all but gleamed from the tiny screen.

_I trust this missive finds you well, etc., etc., I shall forego the usual felicitations, because I’m very sorry to have to inform you that at least one of you is, as I write this, in rather pressing mortal danger. Now, do not laugh, especially you, Athos. Do you remember that little holiday you and I went on… Oh I don’t recall the exact date. I believe you and Aramis were on a break of sorts, or perhaps in between breaks, who can tell with the two of you. But I digress, and you and I had to dip into Tartarus: do you recall? Of course you do, your memory has ever been a beacon as shiny as my Da’s luminous face. Well, long story short, the Time, as they say, is Upon Us. Kronos has risen and has half a mind to eat your entire lineage. Gaia is pissed, my Da is bristling, the Anemoi are blowing, and anyways, it’s a rotten shitstorm for humanity who have apparently been just an utter pain in our great-grandmother’s fecund arse, or else to say **annoying**. I do not see that I have much of a choice, so far as it has been put to me, but to join the upcoming war on the side of the Titans, i.e. wipe out the pestilence of humanity, starting with the Olympians who have birthed them. As for the two of you, I know how much your honor and other striving body parts will prevail upon you to come running back to Greece as my fam marches on Olympus, but as your friend, nay brother, nay Captain, I implore, nay I order the two of you to **hide**. Perhaps Aramis’ relatives know a secret passageway into the seventh circle of Hell: it will probably be damn nice and cozy compared to what hell we’re about to unleash on Earth. In a word: Adieu. I hope we still have internet when this apocalypse subsides._

_Yours, despite the ongoing situation,_  
_Porthos_

 

**Flight KQ 0217, autumn 2017**

We left Madagascar on one of the last planes that took off from the island before it was quarantined. Beneath us, I saw the grey tendrils of pneumonic plague spread across the land, felling humans with their pestilent touch. The image of my Godmother shimmered briefly in the mist, as she strode across the island without haste. Beside me, a newspaper rustled.

“Puerto Rico is about to get hit again,” Athos cleared his throat and I sensed his sideway glance at me. But I stared out of the window with grim determination, my fangs tingling. “There’s going to be a lot of damage.”

“Obviously.”

“Aramis,” his voice was very soft, as was the touch to my wrist. “We need to talk.”

I whipped my head round and showed him my face. But he did not flinch.

“The Titan uprising is not my fault.”

I flashed my teeth at him in a snarl and turned my head away. Fifteen hours to Athens. The Anemoi would not interfere with our flight, not unless Discord confronted them. He looked calm, but Olympian fire radiated off him; the flames that had burned down Troy licked underneath his skin; heat prickled my flesh and singed the hairs on my arm.

“Since when do you care what happens to my family? You were glad that their powers had dwindled and that they lay asleep on Olympus.”

His soft, reasonable words wormed their way into my skull, scurrying along my neurons, setting off electric charges at the synapses, until the heat that rose within me became unbearable. I dropped my gaze briefly to his wrist, where divine blood pounded, and stood up.

“Excuse me,” I ground out through clenched teeth. “I need the bathroom.”

Athos looked up at me with dark eyes, but he didn’t say anything. As I drifted down the aisle, I could feel the presence of my Godmother. Ten hours to Paris. Fifteen hours to Athens. Where would the first case appear?

The man who caught my eye and followed me into the enclosed space was lucky: a dead body on the plane would cause too much fuss. I had known countless men like him, who succumbed to the lure of the shadows at the drop of a hat. A confident man, a family man, who wore an expensive wedding ring, an expensive watch and an expensive shirt and whose skin was lax with the laxity of age as it broke under the pressure of my fangs. His blood was virile and powerful, as befitted a man of self-satisfied success. His cock was still half-hard even as his blood was surging up, up into his neck and into my mouth. His pulse had leapt, as I knew it would, when I’d shown him my real face as I walked past him: the face of the twenty-year-old boy that I had been 700 years ago when death had put me on the path towards immortality.

I rinsed my lips, dried my hands, and watched the rosy cheeks hollow, the mouth tauten, the expression of sweetness drain as the face of Dr A. Flitterbatt appeared in the mirror. Then, I alerted the cabin crew.

“This gentleman suffered a minor collapse,” I told them, crouching by my patient who lolled groggily against the wall. “It’s unlikely that it’s anything serious. I’m a doctor,” I explained, watching relief melt the man’s drawn features. “He told me he doesn’t have any pre-existing conditions, and he’s feeling better already. I’ll fetch my bag and give him a quick check-over, but I believe there is no cause to worry.”

By the time I dropped back in my seat, my blood had calmed and I could look Athos in the face.

“Better?” he smiled with one corner of his mouth. “As I was saying, chyortik, your reaction has somewhat surprised me.”

“Has it?” Anger bubbled in the pit of my stomach still, but the sweet weight of blood pressed down on it.

“Yes. It has.” He took my hand and threaded his fingers through mine. I watched his thumb draw slow caresses on my skin as he talked. “You never loved the Olympians. This is your chance to watch them getting destroyed for good. Shouldn’t this make you happy?”

“Athos-”

“Shh. Listen. Aramis, I realise that it’s me you’re worried about, but there’s no need. I am not like my family, I have walked the Earth and lived among humans for millennia. If nothing else, you should trust me to outthink Kronos.”

“You will charge in and try to save your folk,” I hissed.

“Of course.” He smiled a sweet, melancholy smile. “And you will charge in and try to save me. This is how it works, Aramis.”

“They might kill you.”

“Yes. They might.”

“And once Olympus is destroyed, I won’t be able to bring you back!” I’d tried to stop the anguished tone, but he caught it.

“Elysium is not a bad place to spend eternity, chyortik. You might like it.”

His words startled me. In all this, it was never the prospect of my own death that filled me with anger and worry. I wouldn’t die. Vampires did not die. We were famously the un-dead. Demons did not die; they slunk back into shadows, into the deepest, darkest abyss of the human mind, into the place where humanity stored its primal fears, which lay coiled until it was time to spread their leathery wings and haunt men in the dead of night. It was gods who died, not demons. A god who’d grown old, whom humanity abandoned and cut off from the anchor of faith would crawl under a rock, into the roots of trees and the depths of caves, and it would morph into something new and malevolent; something that survived in fairy tales and propaganda and fed on the fears of the easily impressed: The god was dead. Long live the demon.

“They won’t let the likes of me into Elysium,” I said. “I’m not a Hero.”

Athos smiled. “You’re not a villain.”

I smiled back, with all my teeth. “Are you sure?”

“Just ask anyone you like: Aramis of _The Three Musketeers_ – hero or villain? What do you think they’ll say?”

“I hate to say this, Athos, but Alex got this one right: he knew what I was. It’s not my fault that idiots only ever regurgitate the Hollywoodised idea of the three of us.” I shuddered with disgust at the memory of some of the more atrocious incarnations of what humans thought was me. “Can we wait till the Titans have got to them before we act?”

“You can’t expect the Titans to do your dirty work, chyortik. Do it yourself.”

“I’d love to.” I drove the tip of my tongue along the row of my upper teeth. “Believe me, Athos, I’d love to.”

“Well then, look at the bright side: if Hephaestus and the Anemoi continue their pissing contest in America, Hollywood will soon be history and you can rejoice.”

“Which side are you on, Athos?”

“Yours. Always.” He pressed my hand. “But, Aramis, I cannot and will not abandon my family. I am an Olympian by blood.”

“They’d used you! They abused you.”

“And now it’s time for me to be the bigger man and forgive them, and I will try to save them.”

I groaned. He would be, because that’s what he was: the bigger, the greater, the better man. Always. Always.

“Once this is over,” Athos kept talking in a low, hypnotic voice, “there’ll be fewer humans around. Fewer people to annoy you on a daily basis.”

“Typical,” I said. “Gods fight, and it’s humans who suffer and die. This is just the way your family like it, their track record of screwing humans over is impeccable.”

“Don’t be contrary, Aramis. You don’t care about humans. You call them snacks.”

“I’m not contrary, Athos. They might annoy me every now and then, but I love humans.”

Athos started to laugh.

 

**Athens, autumn 2017**

A wisp of smoke, a flicker of flame illuminating the dark, a subterranean rumble followed by a stillness so loud it made one’s mind reel. A flash of gold, a black stallion galloping through the desert, tall, endless sycamores stabbing the sky. The perfect dome of the Pantheon. A ray of sunlight falling upon blushing, pink marbles.

“Hello, puppy.”

A voice that rang of a thousand swords clashing. The endless drum summoning to battle.

“I knew you’d come back to me.”

Resplendent in gold, black curls tossed in the faces of the Anemoi, Ares rose before my eyes like a vision.

“Not to you, but _for_ you,” I barked back, my own hair whipped into my face. “You must leave this place. Olympus will fall!”

“I know, the Titans have risen,” my brother said, baring his teeth that gleamed with a familiar and ferocious light. “War is upon us again. You can feel it singing in your bones, can you not, brother? An ancient song, making your blood boil. _To battle, Achaeans, to battle!_ ”

“It is a war you cannot win,” I said, seizing him by the greaves upon his arms. “It was prophesied in Tartarus. Olympus will fall. I was there, I heard it with my own ears.”

“Then it is true,” Ares’ forehead pressed against my own and our hair tangled into a conjoined curtain. “You love me still.”

His mouth opened and his teeth sank into my lower lip, drawing blood. My mouth filled with its metallic taste, and then a hand, veiny and dark like the roots of a redwood, tore me from the veil.

_Olympus will fall!_

I screamed only to have my cries swallowed by a pair of lips I knew as well as my own heart. “I cannot save them,” I exhaled, wrapping my arms around Aramis’ neck as he pulled me from Morpheus’ clutches.

“Who? Humans?” Aramis whispered against my ear, his hand caressing the perspiration-soaked nape of my neck.

“No. My family.”

He did not speak, but his heart beat steadily, like the rolling of the tides against the shore, and it rocked me against him, and there I clung.

“I will keep you safe,” he whispered into my hair. “My One True God.” His smile spread like a half-moon against my earlobe.

“Does nothing frighten you anymore, my chyortik?” I smiled back against his sharp collarbones.

He did not reply, but I heard his words clear as day in the quickening of his heartbeat against my own.

 

**Ponte Galeria, Rome, autumn 2017**

The grey teeth of the metal fence loomed towards the sky. In their shadow, men and women paced in tighter and tighter spirals, winding themselves up to breaking point, as the world that they’d sought broke apart, just like the world that they’d left behind. The gods to whom they prayed for salvation preferred to play with human lives for their own amusement. The men’s faces were grey and taut; some drew together in small groups that radiated a frantic energy, others crouched by the wall, alone, their arms wrapped around their torsos. There were far fewer women there than men, and they kept themselves apart.

They had set off in search of a life, and their pilgrimage had come full circle and spat them out behind bars in a country that they didn’t understand and that didn’t understand them. The city of Rome was the centre of a religion that had been built around a demigod whose life had begun in a manger, and so it had built its own manger for those who came to seek shelter inside its walls.

There was no way out. Guards roamed the parameter on the other side of the fence, restless and scared, casting long glances at a sky that hung low and purple above their heads. They wanted to run, but there was nowhere to run to: in the south, Vesuvius, Etna and Stromboli spat fire; in the west, the sea foamed and dug its talons into the land, clawing solid rock off bit by bit; in the north, mountains shook and the earth quaked. The few men whose Smartphones miraculously worked reported of deaths all over the country, as churches collapsed over adherents of the Catholic faith who had turned to their god for help and got stoned in reply.

In the east stood Rome. The Eternal City, built upon the rock. Upon Petrus. The seat of the most powerful man in the world, the bishop who had a direct line to God, was safe. It stood to reason that this was the one place that would be spared when He discharged His divine wrath over the world, like He had done in Biblical times.

The earth trembled. The skies opened. The humans drew together, huddling in themselves with their shoulders pulled up and their heads tucked in, watching the hostile world around them with suspicious eyes.

_But Noah found favour in the eyes of the Lord. These are the records of the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time; Noah walked with God._

Words of prayer erupted amidst the humans, in a multitude of languages as the entire camp spoke in tongues, raising their voices to heavens in a desperate cry for salvation.

The Tiber swelled. Unfurling in front of hundreds of horrified eyes, the ancient god Tevere left his bed and stalked across the land. His feet pulled down pylons and buildings, his fingers dripped poison that humans had fed to him for centuries. They did not worry him, the mortals that prostrated themselves as he approached. Their wailing did not reach his ears, their deaths in his waves did not concern him. He was used to human remains floating in his belly, ever since the ancient Romans had disposed of their criminals by throwing them into the river; they would be digested in time and new life would grow around their bones.

The watery form crashed into the waves of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Surf seethed and foamed, water twirled into equine shapes, giant head and shoulders emerged from the oceanic depths, and Poseidon brandished his trident at Tevere, who charged at him with an almighty roar.

The fountains of the Great Deep burst apart and the floodgates of heaven broke open. Three days and three nights the tidal waves seethed and boiled. Then, the waters of the Tiber ebbed away, exposing the field of carnage to the rays of Helios. Among the heap of bodies in Ponte Galeria, something stirred. A figure pulled itself out of the rabble, as wet and bedraggled as one of the countless rats who crouched on protruding ruins, cleaning their fur with ferocious vigour and large yellow teeth. The figure was human-shaped and human-sized, with the dark hair, dark eyes and the hawkish nose of a Middle Eastern man. It pulled off its woolly hat, scratched its beard and spat out a mouthful of brackish water.

“Well, bugger this for a lark,” spake Jesus Christ.


	2. Kronos

Enamored, Zeus had come to Semele and many times he lay with her, and from that union a seed sprung in her mortal womb, took root and grew there. But Hera would not have a mortal’s womb crowned with such a jewel as her husband was prone to bestow. As Semele swelled with her seed and her pride, as her beauty blossomed, and her tresses grew stronger and longer, like the rivers themselves, she beheld an ancient crone, who lay her hands upon her swollen pride and spoke.

“Blessed among the mortals you have been, O Semele, to carry a gift such as this from a divine lover. But you have not beheld your lover’s true face. How can he claim to love and hold you in his regard if he does not reveal himself to you? How can you bear a child of the one whose true essence you have never beheld? No, surely it is not truly the King of the Gods who is the father to your child.”

And doubt stirred in Semele’s breast. Two thirds of the way she had been in her confinement, but the crone’s words had given her pause. What would the child inside her look like if she had never seen his father’s face? Could she bring an unknown power into the world without knowing its true origin? 

“If you love me, my Divine Beloved,” she had addressed herself to Zeus, “then you would let me see you in all your glory. O hide not your face from me, you who are the light of the creation and the Father of Wisdom, you are the shaker and maker of the stars, and who have planted this seed which now swells my belly with such unknown fruit. O, let me see your beloved face, my King, my Lover, do not be deaf to your Semele’s tears.”

And he who had in love’s throes vowed upon the Styx to grant his beloved’s truest wish, begged her to relent, for to aim above one’s mortal station spelled disaster to anyone whose hubris would rise to stare into the face of God. But stirred by her tears and supplications, the Thunderous Father relented, and revealed himself in all his glory before his lover’s eyes, and upon beholding that which is only given to the gods to see, caught in the fiery blaze of his thunderbolts, Semele burst into flames and was immolated before his eyes. Horror, grief, and pity had moved the All Father’s hand, and he plucked the fruit of their union out of her burning form, and placed the unborn child into his own thigh to carry him until his time was due.

That child had been Dionysus, torn from his mother’s flaming womb, born of his Father’s mighty thigh: Dionysus the twice-born. Long would he sit and play under the watchful eye of Olympus, until Hera, in her unrelenting rage, deemed fit to punish the infant the same way she had punished his proud mother. She had gathered lower Titans, who had been spared the tar pits of Tartarus, and guided those ravenous forces to the field where little Dionysus played. And there, the Titans had feasted their eyes upon the boy, and savagely tore him to pieces and devoured him. Only his heart remained, held in safety by his sister Athena. This heart which would cause him to be reborn yet again, a god.

When Zeus had learned of this cruel outrage, he had thrown down his thunderbolts and incinerated the Titans where they stood. And from their ashes, that still held a spark of his son, he had fashioned the humans. And to this day, the Dionysian spark lives on in them, and sustains them, and keeps them close to their Thunderous Father’s heart.

**Mount Olympus, autumn 2017**

“It is only a story, and a successfully plagiarized one at that,” the God of Discord had been saying as they continued their climb up the mountainside. “As you very well know,” he added with a smirk towards his companion. “Humanity did not arise from ashes of the Titans, but it is certainly a storied enough beginning to make the Titans wish to wipe them off the face of their mother.”

“Gaia?” his companion exhaled with a touch of venom.

“The very Mother Earth.”

“The Earth is trying to destroy humanity? Listen, I do not question what Porthos wrote, that the Titans might find them to be… well, annoying. But once humans are gone, how are any of us who are only propped up by faith to continue?”

“The Titans predate the Olympians,” Athos explained, pausing to take a swallow out of his water canister. “In a way, they predate faith itself. Their existence isn’t predicated upon humanity in any way. As for the rest,” he gestured vaguely towards the horizon. “Well, they don’t care.”

“But I _like_ humans,” Aramis said with a wistful sigh as his eyes followed the horizon. It pinkened in the distance with the advent of Eos, and the demon frowned, as if challenging the Titaness herself.

“Since when?” Discord laughed and his hand reached out to brush a long curl out of his lover’s eye.

“Since always! They’re quite entertaining. _You’ve_ always insisted on keeping them around, haven’t you?”

“And you’ve always berated me for it!”

“I _loved_ d’Artagnan! He was one of my closest bosom companions!”

“Chyortik!” Athos threw his head back and his body shook with full laughter that echoed off the top of Olympus. “You hated him! You spent his entire life wanting to eat him, and then you _did_ eat him at first opportunity.”

“Now, hold on!”

“I do not begrudge it to you, since you waited until I was dead out of respect for my wishes…”

“I was at my dear friend’s death-bed! Soothing his passage to the afterlife, when he lay bloody and suffering upon the very point of a tragic, heroic demise!”

“Aramis! Now, I am aware that your memory isn’t as good as mine, but that is simply a… hyperbole at best!”

“You weren’t there! How dare you to tell me what I did and felt at the time!”

“Sirs,” a somber voice cut into the escalating bickering. “I believe we have arrived.” 

The Grigori nodded up the windy path, where a sort of a greeting party awaited their arrivals. There stood a small troop, crimson feathered helmets and golden shields blazing in the early hours of the rising dawn.

“Brother. You return to us.”

Athos wiped the sweat that had suddenly stood out upon his brow and took a silent step forward.

“And brother’s revenant, whom my children are so fond of,” Ares nodded towards the demon who stood with a barely contained snarl upon his handsome, pale face. “I believe you remember Kydoimos,” he added, nodding backwards to one of his party.

_To battle Achaeans, to battle!_

“Why so glum, my brother’s lover,” Ares smiled and his eyes kindled with the fires of destruction. “Or did you really think that a demon could kill a god? Only another god can kill a god. Isn’t that so, Athos?”

“This war has restored you to your former glory,” Athos spoke quietly. 

“And did I not always say, one cannot have War without Discord.” Ares’ smile cut his face in half. His chest heaved and his greaves shook and clanged together. “You’ve come all this way to join our fight. What say you, brother: do you fancy a trip to the Koreas?”

“Contain your glee!” Athos’ commanding voice boomed beneath the heavens. “Set aside your selfish megalomania or we are all doomed,” he spoke, scanning the horizon, where the rays of Helios’ chariot began to blaze anew in flames of red and orange.

“Have you not come to fight for us?” A woman clad in gilded armor over the flowing skirts of her gown stepped forward. From where the small troop stood, they could not make out her features, for they seemed to shift too swiftly for the eye to behold.

Discord’s voice shook with uncertainty. “Aphrodite. You yet stand with him.”

“And you with us,” the Goddess of Love repeated. “Was it not love that drew you here, to your home, where you belong?”

Before anyone could utter a reply, the ground shook beneath their feet. Behind them, the Bull was rising from the sea again, the testament to the final victory of Oceanus over his old domains.

**Italy, winter 2017**

Then Jesus was led by the spirit into the wilderness. Taking a swig from a salvaged bottle every now and then, he walked, increasingly light-headed, through the devastated region of Latium, clambered over the ruins of the Eternal City, wept bitter tears over the Holy See that lay forever entombed in the waters of Oceanus’ domain. In his anguish, he contemplated raising the Holy Father from the dead to keep him company on his desperate pilgrimage through the wastelands, but he did not give in to temptation. Also, it was impossible to identify the remains of the Holy Father among the thousands of bodies that floated in water and swelled under the glare of Helios, emitting noxious vapours that swirled in lazy coils towards the Titan. Jesus lifted his head to the Sun and shook his head disapprovingly. He was tempted to raise his fist and scream words of anger and abuse at the Heavens, but he did not.

After fasting for forty days and forty nights, he was hungry, and the spirit on an empty stomach didn’t help. A donkey brayed somewhere in the distance. The tidal wave had swept away human life, but surprisingly many animals had survived. Paddling past Rome, he had seen a conclave of cats congregate on the dome of the Papal Basilica that protruded from the water. They appeared to have entered into an armistice of sorts with rats, who scurried busily around, dragging looted food onto the roof.

The donkey brayed again, and Jesus directed his steps towards the sound out of habit. The memory of his triumphal entry in Jerusalem was suddenly vivid in his mind. Ah, happy days! Regardless of what came later (and since he walked the Earth in his corporeal body again, he was plagued by the memories of his martyrdom; bodies, it turned out, didn’t easily forget trauma) – regardless of what came later, those days had been happy. Banding around with his brothers – disciples, as they were called – cocking a snook at authority, being allowed to get angry.

He missed that anger. That burning deep within his soul, within his guts, like fire and brimstone from the very depth of Hell, all-consuming, all-human. His Heavenly Father revelled in ire and wrath, but he did not permit his Son to do the same. Jesus Christ was a different aspect of the Holy Trinity. He was the Son of God, he was revered by humans who prayed to him as their Saviour clothèd all in white who would come to judge the living and the dead. Except he wasn’t. He was the Son of Man, staggering through an apocalyptic nightmare clothed in grubby denim and a t-shirt from a charity bin, and he would certainly not sit in judgement over 7.6 billion souls after humanity fell victim to the Titanic rampage of revenge.

For one, he was trapped here, on Earth, and it didn’t look like an Ascension would be happening any time soon. Or ever.

The Heavenly Father had sent him back to Earth to save humanity once again; granted, it had been his Mother’s idea, for it was she who listened to human pleas for help and endless strings of Ave Maria float up to Heaven. “The Poles are some of my biggest fans, and they are currently praying for a Muslim holocaust. Somebody must go down there and have a word - gently, before your Father decides to either hear them out or punish them. It’s going to be either one or the other, you know what He’s like.” It had been agreed, he had returned, but it had been too late. Poland wasn’t letting Middle Eastern men into their country; humanity was past the point where they’d listen to the words of Jesus; they did not recognise him as he walked among them, and they treated him like they treated others who wandered in search of salvation.

Jesus stopped, pulled out the bottle of grappa from his bag, took a deep swig, and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. As the Son of God, he could not technically die, but he could suffer. The Heavenly Father had made sure of that, for that was the whole point. Jesus closed his eyes, took a few deep breaths and centred himself. _Mildness and clemency. Clemency and mildness_.

He tugged out a battered book from the back pocket of his jeans, opened it at random and read:

_Om lost his temper and turned Lu-Tze into a lowly worm in the deepest cesspit of hell, and then got even more angry when the old man went on peacefully shoveling. "The devils of infinity fill your living bones with sulphur!" he screamed. This did not make a great deal of difference._

His grimy beard twitched as a smile tugged at his mouth. Trust Pratchett to always find the right words to reflect the _conditio humana_ \- or _divina_ , as the case may be. Jesus had grabbed a copy of Small Gods at random from a box at the refugee camp, because the title had appealed to him. He knew it by heart now, and, like Brutha, enjoyed quoting passages to himself for comfort.

He kinda wished he had a turtle.

The braying of the donkey had become urgent, and it sounded much closer. The animal was apparently hiding in the thicket of thorny shrubs. Jesus eyed it apprehensively. The day after he had crawled out of the debris left by the flood, a bush had spoken to him. Jesus had been a human long enough at that point to freak out when the voice of his Heavenly Father came out of the shrubbery.

It had lectured him on the importance of his mission, albeit without specifying its objective, for it was clear that it was too late to save the mortal bodies of humans, and he wasn’t sure how to reach their immortal souls from where he was standing. And if The Walking Dead had taught him anything, it was that in the current climate it wasn’t a great idea to resurrect the deceased.

“Anyway, Son, I’m off,” the Heavenly Father had said – in a more archaic tongue and style naturally, which however is pretty much untranslatable into a modern language and would just sound silly if one tried. “The Titans are pissed off, my Creation is pretty much fucked, there’s nothing for me here. I’ll find myself another dimension and start from scratch.”

Jesus tried, unsuccessfully, to appeal to his Heavenly Father’s sense of duty and gratitude. “It was humans who had given you your powers,” he said. “You were a minor desert deity, venerated by one small tribe. Humans spread your name far and wide. They build churches and cities in your name. They led wars for you!”

“Yes, that was nice,” the Heavenly Father conceded. “But they’re gone now, and I’m not bringing them back. Between you and me, they were quite flawed. The design left a lot to be desired.”

“Yes,” Jesus said gloomily. “I know you think that.”

“You do? Good, good,” the Heavenly Father said abstractedly. “I wasn’t sure if I’d made it clear enough.”

“You had.”

“Right then. There are still humans left alive. If you happen to meet them, remind them of what I told them to do.”

“There are?” Jesus perked up. “Where?”

“It’s very important that they follow my commands,” the Heavenly Father continued. “Or they won’t go to Heaven. Not that there will be any Heaven, probably, once I’m gone. But you never know, your Mother is still around, and the Holy Ghost won’t be far. So anyway, remember Genesis 17:11!”

“I do.”

“Remind humans of it. And of Genesis 17:14.”

“Father, is this really the most pressing-”

“And Genesis 17:23, Exodus 4:25, and… I’m sure there’s more.”

“There is,” Jesus sighed. “Leviticus 12:3.”

“Leviticus! One of my favourites. Now that was a prophet worth his salt, they don’t make ‘em like that anymore.”

“It wasn’t a prophe-”

“Good bye, Son, it’s been real. Good luck!” The voice boomed one last time and then the bush burst into flames. “REMEMBER!”

Jesus remembered. He shuddered at the memory and approached the thicket cautiously, behind which the donkey was screeching at the top of its voice. The animal paused when it spotted him, took a deep breath and screamed bloody murder.

“There, there,” Jesus muttered, patting the matted coat and untangling the piece of string that had snagged in the branches and kept the donkey tethered to the spot. “It’s all right. I’m here now. I’ll take care of you, okay? Just stop screaming, it’s giving me a headache.”

The donkey fell silent. Its silky nostrils nudged the Lord’s hand and it nicked his skin with its lips.

“I don’t have any food on me,” Jesus explained, leading the donkey away from the thicket. “Nor water, I’m afraid. I don’t technically need them, and the water around here is contaminated after the flood, so I stick to spirits. Since you are one of the beasts of the fields, you might end up drinking dirty sludge, which wouldn’t be good for you. I will show you where to find clean water. I’m not going to give you any of my grappa, for I understand that donkeys are prone to alcoholism. And while a drunken ass would be funny to watch, it would be unkind. And I am not an unkind man.”

It was nice to have a conversation with another living being again. The donkey’s ears twitched attentively as it listened, and it reminded Jesus of his disciples. He led it to an abandoned petrol station, rummaged for bottled water among broken shelves, watched it drink, looted the store for provisions for the road that he slung over the donkey’s back, and received a blow to his stomach for his troubles that knocked him to the ground.

“You are an ungrateful ass,” he told the animal, seizing the string firmly and tugging at one silky ear. “I shall call you Judas. Judas Iscariot for short. Now, Judas, you and I are going to set off on a quest, searching for the last humans. For it is written, _Does not a man go after the one sheep which is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing._ ”

He swung himself on Judas’ back, waited for the complaints to subside, and then dug his heels gently into the animal’s flanks. “Where to?” he asked his companion. “I don’t really care. You can choose where to go.”

Judas turned on the spot, this way and that, and Jesus waited patiently. Eventually, the donkey made his final decision: he lifted his nose, brayed one more time, and trotted south, towards the red-tinted skies above the Phlegraean Fields, towards the smoke billowing from Vulcanus’ forge.

Jesus raised his eyebrows. “Really? You sure?” He grinned under his beard. “Well, okay then. After all, why should I doubt you?” He scratched the mane between the ears. “You do what you think is right.”

As they rode through the ravaged lands, Jesus threw his head back and cried in a voice that rivalled that of Judas: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

**Mount Olympus, autumn 2017**

“They’re coming!” my brother cried, shield held aloft as the skies above his head burst open and a cloud of thunder descended over Olympus.

Instinctively, Aramis and I closed ranks, as my beloved lowered his bag from his shoulder. I saw a hand grenade delicately balanced in his fingers and we exchanged a look. “What?” Aramis asked with subtle motion of a single eyebrow. “They’re made of clay, aren’t they?”

“Not all of them,” I replied as calmly as I could and directed my eyes towards the thunder cloud. “You’d better not look directly at it, my little Semele.”

“I’m not a fucking mortal, _Discord_ ,” he sniped, and pulled a broad sword out of the scabbard strapped to his back. My own sword had already been brandished, the grip golden and glowing in my fist as my armor solidified around me.

Two lightning bolts struck the ground around us. “Father,” I turned. Lightning in his eyes, thunderbolts circling his hair like a crown of thorns. And yet, despite his fierce appearance, not the same as he had been once. Diminished now. King of the fallen and forgotten. His Queen and Sister-wife, my Stepmother, stood at his side. “This is all of you?” I asked, stupefied.

“The rest have fallen,” Hera replied, her eyes measuring me slowly.

“Poseidon?” I asked with growing desperation as the tide swelled up drowning out the city of Litochoro as it crept higher and higher up the slopes of Olympus.

“Slain in Italy,” Ares supplied. “Killed by a _river_ god,” he snarled.

“And Hades?”

“He was the first to go,” Hera said, “when the uprising overran Tartarus.”

“Hestia? Demeter?”

“All gone.”

“Then we are finished,” I whispered. Gone, all gone. Apollo, Hermes, Artemis… 

“ _Not yet_ ,” boomed my Father’s voice as lightning unleashed all around us, falling into the swelling sea, raging against the turbulent heavens.

A giant fist slammed into the mountain, shaking its foundations. All around us, apparating like the very specter of Mount Othrys, the Titans rose, their earthy skin and burning eyes ablaze with vengeance. Stones poured down like hail over our heads as we raised our shields in a futile show of defense. 

Aramis grinned at me, his teeth clasping the ring of his grenade as he unleashed it in the direction of a Titaness descending over us, her mouth gaping in a horrid facsimile of a smile. The explosion joined the rain of thunderbolts, providing a temporary distraction at best. Another fist descended from the sky, crashing around us, scattering the Olympians. 

A broken body landed at my feet, hair spilling like a shower of gold as I cradled her. “Aphrodite,” I breathed out, gazing with horror at the open cavity of her chest. “No!” I pleaded, my hands covered in ichor as her eyes met mine and her lips opened in a silent cry. “No, no, no… you can’t… you can’t…” I begged, gathering the Goddess of Love closer to my breast as my shield provided temporary shelter from the divine storm. Her hand clasped mine, my body shuddered as a wave of warmth flooded my heart. And then, my hand clasped at nothing but air. She was gone.

“Athos, we must go,” I heard but could not move.

“Kyrios, save yourself!”

“Go where?” I asked no one in particular. I raised my eyes to the heavens in time to see Kronos, towering in triumph over Olympus. My Father, thunderbolts and all, clasped in his fist as his mouth opened into a black, gaping abyss.

“My God...” Aramis whispered into my ear, his breath scalding me.

And in the next blink, Kronos’ mouth had closed, teeth crashing together as the King of the Gods disappeared eternally down his titanic gullet. The circle had been complete.

I leapt to my feet just as a titanic fist was about to come crashing down over Ares and his ilk. “Stop!” I cried. To my surprise, Rhea, for I surmised it had been she, and Kronos, still turgid and radiant from having consumed my progenitor, halted and looked down upon me. “You don’t have to kill him!” I shouted up. “If it’s humans you want to wipe out, War is not your enemy!” I continued. Rhea and Kronos swayed like pine trees in the wind, still like the sea before a storm. “War controls populations,” I went on, “War balances the scales and prevents them from overrunning… your Mother. Don’t you want to keep the humans in check?”

“What are you doing?” Aramis and Ares both hissed at me from opposite directions.

“Making discord,” I hissed back. “And saving you so you can fight another day!”

Rhea had gargled at her husband, who thundered something back. I briefly wondered whether eating Zeus might have given him indigestion.

The cloak of Discord shimmered and billowed around me. “Are you really going to let him talk to you like that?” I shouted up at the Titaness. It was a desperate and ridiculous Hail Mary, as the adherents of Jesus would say, but my other arms were powerless against them.

Another rumble shook the skies: Rhea had punched Kronos in whatever passed for his nose. Behind us, Oceanus still roared.

“Go! Go!” I shouted as Ares and what was left of his progeny disapparated before our eyes.

“Well done, Kyrios,” the Grigori chimed in from somewhere behind me. “Now the rest of us can die here heroically, without anyone else to witness this embarrassment.”

“Oh, shut it, you pest!” 

“Athos,” Aramis wrapped his arm around me. His eyes were dark as the raging sky around us. “We should go.”

I turned to take in the gruesome sight. In another few minutes, the mountain would crumble into the sea. “I’m so sorry, Aramis,” I said. “You’d always said that you would gladly follow me even unto death…”

“We’re not dead yet,” he pointed out.

Another punch shook the mountain, this time coming from beneath our feet, as if another Titan was attempting to break out from the stones.

“There’s nowhere to go,” I sighed with resignation. It was over; the prophecy had come to pass. Olympus had fallen.

The mountain shook again, forming a crevasse into which the three of us nearly tumbled. And from within the split earth, a voice.

“Ah, my dear friends! At last, I've found you!” Porthos’ beaming face rose like a congenial Hydra out of the cracked rock. “Now come with me before you get eaten too!”

“I’ve never been happier to see you,” Aramis declared, accepting Porthos’ hand and lowering his body gracefully into the shell of the mountain. Grimley, the little shit, had already jumped in and was cowering as bravely as he could behind the broad back of our old titanic friend.

I cast another look at the warring Titans and was about to follow suit when a flash of white billowing in the wind caught my eye.

“Athos! Let’s go!” Aramis shouted.

“Just a minute,” I said, scrambling up the falling rocks to get to the mirage. But no, it was no mirage. It was Hera, intact and insensate, lying in the rubble with a boulder firmly pressed into her chest.

“You’re kidding me,” I heard an Aramisian explosion of exasperation. 

I pushed at the rock with all my strength until it slowly rolled off the Queen’s prone body. There was a spark of life in her yet. Only a god could kill another god, after all.

“You’re fucking kidding me!”

Ignoring my beloved’s outrage, I lifted Hera off the face of the doomed mountain and slung her unconscious body over my shoulder before making my way back to my friends. As long as even one of the Dodekatheon still lived, then there remained a ray of hope for the world.

***

We squeezed through the crack in the rock, dropping to the ground on the other side like beads from a torn rosary. The God of Discord glowed in the dark; his burnished breastplate was a golden beacon, Olympian fire stoked by the fight radiated off him. Had that truly happened? Had the forces of nature truly anthropomorphi- well, gigantomorphised and physically attacked the gods of Ancient Greece?

I shouldn’t have been so astonished. Was it not my religion where _word became flesh and came to dwell among us_? And yet the sheer dimensions of the Titans had staggered me. They were more than mere giants. They were not the Nephilim who once lived on the Earth when the sons of God had intercourse with the daughters of men, who then gave birth to children destined to become the heroes and warriors of ancient times, as the First Book of Moses teaches us. No, there was nothing human about the Titans, nor anything divine. They were rock in gaseous form, amorphous and solid at the same time. They were the unimaginable vastness of the universe compressed into a space far too small to contain it. For once, I could picture the clouds of Jupiter and the rings of Uranus, for I had seen them smash down anthropomorphic personifications of Hellenic deities. I had heard solar winds roar, I had felt the coldness of nihil embrace me and render me humble.

I turned my head and beheld the silent figure of my Godmother, whose bones radiated blistering cold.

“Have you come for her?” I nodded my head at the white shape that hung limply over Athos' shoulder, arms dangling. “Feel free to go about your business, I won’t stop you.”

“I am come to walk by your side,” she replied. “As I often do.”

“Yes.” I had grown used to the sight of Death occasionally keeping me company on my errands. She had been a gentle and comforting presence when my leprechaun had ceased to live. She was, on the whole, a much less embarrassing relative than any member of Athos’ hick family. Well, it looked like this particular embarrassment was gone for good. Hera was still clinging to what passed for life among gods, but with her worshippers long gone, removed from Olympus that was the seat of the Dodekatheon’s powers, she would surely fade away into nothingness. I, for one, would not mourn her.

Trust Athos to rescue the wicked stepmother. This was the Mordaunt situation all over again. I ground my teeth and clenched my fist until blood welled up in the half-moon cuts under my nails. He had not listened to me then, throwing himself on the muzzle of my musket and arresting the shot, and he did not listen to me now as he fucking rescued fucking Hera, of all gods.

The underground cavern wound deep into the bowels of the Earth. It was safe, Porthos assured us, for the Titans had left Tartarus to make a clean sweep on the surface. Even here, we could feel Gaia’s tremors as she rid herself of humans that crawled on her crust, just like humans rid themselves of lice and fleas.

Porthos was twice as large as I’d ever seen him, yet he slipped effortlessly through the narrow passages. I had never given it much thought then (for the air had been permeated by blood and terror which distracted me quite pleasantly), but he had fitted easily into the grotto of Locmaria once upon a time, before the cavern collapsed above him and drove him underground.

Grimley was Grimley still. Even though a faint acerbic smell told me that he was sweating under his functional wear, his hair was barely mussed and his breath was even. It gave me grim satisfaction when he stepped into what Porthos assured us were leviathan droppings after we’d forded the Cocytus at a shoal, leaving the domain of Hades behind. No, Hades’ domain no longer. The Greek God of the Underworld had fallen, his realm was without a master, a silent wasteland where not even the dead dwelled any more. As silent as she’d come, my Godmother had disappeared.

Cerberus lay on the opposite bank, where his carcass had been washed ashore. Three necks twisted, three mouths open wide in a last desperate snarl, three pairs of eyes covered by the milky film that Death put there.

“Athos,” I said, unable to contain myself any longer. “Where are we going?”

Above our heads, separated from us by the bottom of the Macedonian Gulf, Oceanus seethed and roared.

“Mount Him!” boomed Porthos happily. Like Athos, he too gleamed, but whereas Athos emitted supernatural light, Porthos radiated the warm rays of a small sun. “I know the way, no problem. When my fam come after you – and they will, make no mistake – you’ll face them on Athos’ own turf. And if I know anything about cuz, he has a trick or two up his sleeve.”

“What will you do, Porthos?” Athos inquired. “Will you stay and fight by our side?”

“Me? Ohoho! Nah, I’m gonna rejoin my brethren and help them get rid of those pesky humans. You must admit they’re très annoying, as one says these days. Our old mate d’Artagnan was a saint compared to the new batch!”

“But…” For a moment, Athos was staggered. “You like humans. You’ve always liked humans. Where does all this sudden hate come from?”

“Hate?” Porthos turned and frowned. “What’s hate got to do with it? D’you think I hated those heathens whom we converted with fire and sword when we were being Knights of Malta? Or those Huguenots whom we slayed for shits and giggles? Or those English against whom we waged war for centuries? I’ve nothing against the English; their food and beer maybe, and their weather is a disgrace, but to be honest, Athos – I can’t really tell one nation from another, and all those new-fangled monotheistic religions are the same to me. When it’s Titans against humans, it’s easy to tell them apart.”

We listened to his logic in mute amazement. Granted, humans were annoying, and their little feuds and quibbles were laughable in the great scheme of things, but Porthos had always been the, well, nice one. He gambled with human men, he cavorted with human women, he got on with humans. All of a sudden, Athos and I felt like men who’d brought home an adorable abandoned bear cub, only to wake up one day to the sight of a grizzly eating the family next door.

Porthos flashed a smile as bright as that of the Sun. In the next moment, a giant fist swung through the air, through the solid ceiling of rock, and when the avalanche died down, a tunnel had appeared above our heads. Porthos stepped aside and bowed to me. “Aramis, my friend! Your skills at climbing in even the most confined spaces are legendary. Be a dear and throw us a rope once you’re up there.”

I lifted my face towards the deceptively tender caress of Helios’ fingers as they wormed their way down the narrow shaft. As I braced myself against the stones and glided up the terrestrial chimney, I spared one thought to my coat and boots that would be ruined by the time I clawed my way out of the grave of the Old Gods.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And you thought Chapter 1 was bad.


	3. Rhea

**London, autumn 2017**

The sleek silver body of a Jaguar was a rare sight in the quiet West Ealing street, but such a vehicle had rolled silently to a standstill in front of a semi-detached house, where one solitary light flickered in one of the bedroom windows upstairs. Even in repose, the car projected a sense of coiled power and movement, like its namesake the jungle cat lying in wait for prey. It stood patiently, until the eyes of a casual observer familiarised themselves with the sight, and then the door slid open. A long-legged man slithered out, glided across the street like a Dementor and stopped at the door. One gloved hand alighted delicately on the door knob, and it fell open under his touch.

A brief gleam of teeth indicated that a smile happened on the face that lurked in shadows. It was a handsome face, pale, with an aquiline nose and eyes that burned like torches. Had a neighbour spotted the man, they might remember him from that afternoon, when he happened to pass by and helped old Mrs Fothergill carry her tartan shopping trolley over the threshold. 

Mrs Fothergill was long asleep, but the light in her granddaughter’s room indicated that the girl was still up. The stairs didn’t creak as the man drifted upstairs like mist; the bedroom door opened soundlessly. The girl didn’t cry out when the dark, handsome stranger materialised by her bed; she merely stared at him with huge eyes over the display of her mobile, where Alec and Magnus were passionately making out.

The man smiled. The girl dropped her phone and raised herself on her elbows. “What…” she said weakly. “How…”

“Shh…” He had sunk on her bed next to her in one smooth, swift movement. “Your grandmother invited me in. I wouldn’t have entered otherwise, it would be impolite.”

“Impolite?” 

The smile deepened. “You don’t have to repeat the last word I said,” he told her gently. “So don’t.”

She shook her head mutely.

“Good girl.” He tugged his glove off with his teeth and cupped her face, stroking her temple with his thumb, where her young blood pounded in a firm, steady beat. “You invited me too,” he reminded her, and her eyes widen.

“Oh! I didn’t think you’d take that seriously… sir.” The memory of a giggly joke passed between them on the wings of a smile and a blush. “I’m just an intern.”

“A beautiful girl is a beautiful girl,” he said earnestly. “You don’t wish me to go.”

“No,” it was a soft expulsion of air rather than a word, but it wasn’t long before her breathing became laboured and heavy, draining out the greedy slurping noises that rose from between her thighs. Her nightie pushed up to her waist, her legs thrown wide open, she clung to his hair with a white-knuckled grip. Her eyes were open too, staring unseeingly at the ceiling, while her head reeled and spun and hot blood surged to her crotch. His fingers were buried deep inside her, pushing and twisting, generating more friction than her body could possibly contain, and his mouth, soft and cruel at once, was clamped to her thigh and sucked, sucked, sucked in the heat that gushed out of her in a flood of blood.

All of a sudden, he stopped, and she keened, lightheaded with lust and loss of blood. His eyes were fixed on the window. Behind it, crouching in thin air, hovered a shape that might be called human, if only because the human tongue has no other way to refer to it. It had the outlines of shoulders and a torso, and a face as cold and stormy as a breeze over the Baltic Sea.

“The wind is in the east tonight,” the blood-stained lips muttered. A wicked grin slashed across the tempestuous visage, and in a flash the wildling Euros was gone. 

The vampire glanced down at the girl, who was gazing at him with glazed eyes. He ducked his head and pressed his open mouth to the wound, closing it with gentle touches of his tongue.

“I apologise,” he said politely as he tucked her in. “I’m not in the habit of leaving ladies high and, ah, dry, but I have pressing matters of life and death to attend to. You’ll have had pleasurable dreams tonight,” he instructed her. “Dreams that will make you blush on the way to work tomorrow, and you will regret not catching a glimpse of me. But don’t worry, my dear. Delectable as you are, you will find a young man or lady to attend to your needs in no time. In the meantime-” He took her hand, pushed it under the duvet and steered it between her legs, pressing her fingers to her wet flesh.

His faint European accent became more and more pronounced as he spoke. His face appeared to grow younger, his lips redder, his eyes more glowing. 

“Goodbye, sweet Lucy,” he breathed from the threshold. “Do not… remember me.”

A few seconds later, he was sitting in the Jag, and as the dashboard sprang to life, the logo of AluCar D appeared on the display. He smiled, as he always did at the sight of his achievement. Designing a full aluminium bodyshell had been a groundbreaking feat of engineering, and he hadn’t felt so elated since his first train ride back in 1868. Uncle Aramis had been right: there was great pleasure to be gained from fulfilled ambitions.

He started the engine and turned his mind to business. “Siri, call Marie.”

**Mount Athos, winter 2017**

When the humans began to conflate the image of Apollo, or Phoebus-Apollo as he had often been called, with Helios, it tempered the sun. He shone as if wrapped in soft down, floating on a cloud of gentle reason, stroking the men and women who toddled on beneath his rays with soothing light, coaxing their bodies into producing vitamins and elements beneficial to their tender well-being. They were so soft, you see, the humans, so delicate, so easy to scorch. Even the ones descended from his truest children. 

With Apollo vanquished, there was nothing keeping Helios from stretching his rays as far and wide and hot as he saw fit. And he saw fit to burn as deeply as his Titanic heart desired, which in fairness, was quite deep.

The vampire adjusted his broken sunglasses over the bridge of his nose and pulled up the hood of his embroidered coat. He bent down, attempting to brush filth off his trousers with delicate, white hands that were almost too tempting for Helios to kiss. He aimed his rays at the nightcrawler just _so_ , casting his shadow in a long line behind him. But then, a familiar face popped like a gopher out of the hole in the ground, and his son Porthos pulled himself to the surface of the mountain by the rope the vampire had lowered. 

“Does anyone even know what date it is?” Helios’ progeny inquired, looking about him with an accomplished look. “My mobile is broken and I never could figure out Tartarus time.”

Helios turned his face and directed his vengeful rays elsewhere, leaving the newly arrived to the peak of Mt. Athos in relative peace and quietude.

***

The monks had all departed. It had been the smart thing to do, I supposed. Why sit around and wait for the sea to swallow you, or the mountain to crumble beneath your feet, or the sun to burn you to ashes. Ashes, nothing but ashes.

“Athena,” I moaned into my hands. I had mourned her, of course, but her absence had been conspicuous, so it had been easy to mourn. It was a lot more difficult to mourn the passing of the others. Hermes, the swift-footed prince of thieves. Hephaestus, the always cheated upon. Dionysus, who had died for our sins long before Jesus had ever been conceived. Persephone with asphodel in her hair. “Aphrodite,” I uttered, tears falling from my eyes. How did the world even turn now that Love was dead?

_You are not Love’s bitch._

I screamed into the skies, in the face of Helios and the Anemoi, and my cries roused a murder of crows who scattered over my head like ghosts from the past.

“Athos…”

“Don’t!” I interrupted him. “Don’t coddle me, not now.”

Apollo and his mind-boggling prophesies, Artemis with the rays of the moon in her hair, Hestia of the hearth and homestead. Where were we to go if the concept of _home_ was no more?

“Porthos is leaving,” Aramis spoke. “Will you come to say good-bye?”

“Porthos is one of them,” I spoke through my tears. “Porthos can go.”

“That isn’t fair.” The touch of his hand upon my shoulder made me shudder. “Porthos saved us.”

“Saved us,” I repeated with broken laughter. “There is no saving us anymore.”

My Father. The All Father. He whose nature was to create and to give life, even if it should lead to eternal suffering for all his children. How poorly formed we all were, in the end. How very weak in the face of the Elements.

My Father who had sewn Dionysus into his thigh. My Father who had sent the Grigorim to take care of us. My Father who had made me a God. My Father. I could not bring myself to even think his name.

“Athena,” I said again. She who had been born from our Father’s head, the embodiment of all Wisdom. The sane one, the fully clothed-one. The one who had ever taken my side. 

“Athos,” Aramis’ fingers squeezed. “Remember that I love you.”

“Do you?” I wondered, I truly did. Was love still alive now that Aphrodite was no more? It did not seem likely.

“Please,” his lips whispered against the nape of my neck. “For fuck’s sakes, snap out of it,” he added more firmly. “Remember, not your entire family is dead… Oh _fuck_ , I cannot believe you saved fucking Ares and Hera of all the Gods!”

I scrambled up to my feet, stumbling blindly away from the cliff’s face. The pile of bottles that the monks had left behind sat like an arsenal against the wall of an abandoned storehouse. 

“Bring those,” I nodded towards the stash as I addressed Grimley. “I’ll bring this.” I bent to the ground and swept up Aramis’ satchel, the one that still held his hand grenades, and who knows what other weapons that would be no use against a Titanic uprising.

His eyes were two black sardonyx gems staring into my soul as if weighing it upon an invisible scale. “Where do you think you’re going?” he called out after me.

“To my cave,” I replied. “Don’t follow me.”

“And what are you planning on doing there?”

“Getting fucking trashed,” I muttered, scooping up one bottle from the pile before I walked up the winding hillside path.

“And what am I supposed to do with _her_!” I heard him shout.

Hera. The first woman to set foot on Mount Me. The irony was certainly not lost on anyone present, I imagined.

“You’re a fucking doctor, aren’t you?” I shouted back. “Take care of your bloody patient!”

I had used my Swiss army knife to uncork the bottle before I was even halfway to the hermitage. The path I had followed had been overgrown with wild cornflowers, blues and burgundies, buzzed over with bees and dragon flies. The planet would continue without humans, I thought. Trees would grow taller again, vines would take over everything, stone dwellings would crumble and new ecosystems would spring up in their stead. And soon enough, Kronos would find me, open up with gaping maws, and swallow me whole. 

“Serves them right,” I muttered, draining half the bottle in one swallow. “They never deserved any of this beauty.” 

I tore the vines that had grown over the mouth of the cave with my bare hands and sank to the my knees before the entrance. It was still here, the opening in the rock’s face that had once housed my quietude. Here, I had slept for a hundred years. Here, I had lain with my brother when he had come to me and bared his neck like a fledgling wolf to his alpha. Only now, instead of an empty cavern, I beheld a small stone hut built right into the rocky side of the cliff. I kicked open the door and found the hermit’s dwelling abandoned.

“What fucking idiot built a house inside my cave!” I fumed. “No one even knows how to hermit properly anymore,” I continued to mutter. “Everyone has gone fucking soft… Fuck off!”

“Kyrios,” I heard. “This is a lot of wine.” The bottles rattled against one another in the cart that he had miraculously snatched from thin air, like he always did.

“You and I had drunk more in our day,” I replied with a sad burst of laughter. “Remember, Grigori? When you were called Grimaud? You had somehow managed to be the most annoying even despite not being allowed to speak?”

“And what does Kyrios intend to do now?” the nuisance asked, cocking his head like a disapproving spaniel. “Surely not sit in your cave and drunkenly wait to be eaten?”

“What difference does any of it make anymore?” I sighed. “I’m over three thousand years old, Grimley. Do you suppose I give a toss about Kronos eating me or Rhea crushing me beneath her dirty, sodden fist? There’s no more Wisdom in the world, no more Reason, no more Love.” I walked deeper into the hermit’s hut. “Only too much fucking light.” My hand touched the damp stones of the wall and slipped over the moss under my fingers. “Put out the light, and then put out the light,” I spoke. A long time ago, perhaps, there had been humans worth saving. No more, no more. 

A sound of wings startled me. I supposed it had been another crow, or perhaps a bat that had gotten too used to calling my old mountainside dwelling its home. I turned and beheld my guardian, still standing in the back lit archway of the hut’s opening. Upon his shoulder sat a snowy owl.

“Hello,” I said. “Where did you come from?”

“She must have heard your wailing, Kyrios.” Grimly extended his arm and the little owl hopped along it until it perched upon his fingers.

“Is that you, Sophia?” I approached softly, with my voice barely above a whisper, and reached out my hand to stroke her soft plumage. Gray streaked my fingers as ashe fell from her wings revealing the brown plumage beneath, no longer snowy. Athena’s owl, here, on Mount Athos. She hopped gladly over onto my shoulder and buried her beak in the tangle of my curls.

“Perhaps this is a sign, Kyrios,” Grimley attempted, “that not all is yet lost?”

I cradled the bird in my arms and hid my face in the soft down of the feathers of her back. “Go away, Grimley,” I muttered. “Leave me the wine.”

***

I opened my eyes and stared into blinding darkness. Around me, my surroundings came into focus: the cross on the opposite wall, the desk, the shelf, the bare necessities of a monastic life. For a moment, a memory stirred in the recesses of my mind. I had lived in a monk’s cell once, as boy and man. Until I drank the blood of my egumen and sealed a covenant of a different kind.

I did not often require sleep. But ever since the Titans had risen, I’d had few opportunities to feed on blood. I was reluctant to drain Athos (and he’d gone and barricaded himself in his kelion anyway, in a ridiculous callback to the juvenile shenanigans of 1625), and humans had become a rare delicacy, like kobe beef. There was always Grimley, but the Watcher had brandished a cleaver ominously when he saw me looking the other day, and, when all was said and done, the Grigori was too much bother. I could survive on mortal food just fine, even though it rendered me short-tempered.

No, it was not lack of sustenance that worried me. Used as I was to sleeping by Athos’ side, my heartbeat and blood were guided by him. I would dream dreams that had nothing to do with me – no visions of black earth filling my mouth and skull, no grave closing above my head, but rather fanciful images and scenes sprung from quite a different kind of consciousness.

Not so tonight. My somnambular perambulations had driven me into the frosty embrace of nihil, such as I had not experienced before. There was nothing there. And the nothing was as absolute as the vacuum of the cosmos. Morpheus had perished. His ivory box lay smashed and trampled under titanic feet.

There was nothing to be gained from lying on the narrow monkish cot. I rose and dressed, and then I dutifully went and checked on Hera, who lay in lethargic slumber from which there was no awakening, like so many old gods before her whose believers abandoned them.

The sight of the hut in the cave mouth where Athos had barricaded himself filled me with ire, which is why I tended to give it a wide berth and directed my steps towards the garden of the Mother of God instead. If Discord expected me to spring him from his cell again, he could wait till he was blue in the face. I had outwaited the sea and death; I would outwait the sulk.

The garden lay parched under Helios’ merciless glare. Sun had sucked the moisture out of the land and discarded it desiccated and dead, like I had done countless times with humans. To pass the time, and to work off some of my anger, I amused myself winding up buckets of water from the pit of the well, and watched the flowers that wilted around the blue and golden statue of the Virgin Mary unfurl their petals in gratitude. By our reckoning, it was December, but the heat that poured down from the skies was that of midsummer. Grimley claimed that the Earth had turned in her axes and that the hemispheres had swapped places. I was inclined to believe him, if only because I considered it unlikely that the forest fires, ubiquitous though they were, and the fallout from the nuclear explosions that we’d felt happen somewhere in Central Europe had accelerated climate change quite so dramatically.

“Bloody humans,” I muttered, pouring water over the poisonous heads of Our Lady’s tears and columbines. “Bloody stupid mortal idiots. They had to push their luck, the cretinous assholes. Driving species to extinction and littering everywhere they go wasn’t enough, oh no! They had to poison water and earth and mess about with the atmosphere. Which other species in creation would ever think it’s a good idea to leave their planet only to shit into the stratosphere? They could’ve stopped themselves, but no. They had to persevere, they had to anger the Titans.”

I pressed the tip of my tongue against the points of my fangs. They tingled. Oh how I longed to plunge them deep into the butter-soft flesh of a human neck! All that passion, all those fears and furies that drove them, all that power, the anger, the demons that dwelled in the human soul. How fragrant, how alive they rendered human blood. How I missed them. I thought of my beloved human friends of yore. D’Artagnan’s blood had been ambrosia in my mouth when finally, after all those decades, I had the honour and pleasure to perform extreme unction on him. And there had been another friend: a proud, commanding man, Mephistophelian in his aspect and character. It would’ve given Rochefort much pleasure to know that posterity remembered him as an evil genius and demonic adversary from the deepest pits of Hell. I pictured the smirk on his cruel, handsome mouth as he regarded me as a brother. He knew me for what I was, and there had been nights, a few of them, when he’d permitted me to press my mouth to his thigh and feast on his essence. And Alex! His heart had been as expansive as his belly, and he had loved us and turned us into heroes. Even though I was forbidden from snacking on him, I remembered him fondly, if only because his love for my godling had been deep and pure and he’d told all the world that Athos was the best of men.

“You fucking bastards,” I whispered, addressing humanity in general, and caught the Holy Virgin’s eye. The statue was man-sized and stood on a plinth, and she was smiling her serene smile down at me. I bowed my head.

“Forgive me, Madame,” I said, contrite. “I shouldn’t be using such language in your garden. My pain has got the better of me.” I pressed my hand to my heart. “I miss humans,” I admitted. “There were too many of them, and most of them were useless, but the good ones…” I sighed. Oh the good ones! They were so good. Imaginative and unruly, driven and zealous, and, well, fun. Much better than gods, who, on the whole, were set in their ways and unable to learn and evolve.

I picked a blossom of Our Lady’s Modesty and laid it reverently at the Holy Virgin’s feet. She, too, was a goddess, whose temples and altars had stood in all four corners of the world. Unlike Athos’ goddesses, she had never done anything malicious or barbaric, and it was a cruel joke that Athos had used her name to keep other women away from this peaceful place.

“Ave Maria, gratia plena,” I whispered, “Dominus tecum.” I heaved a deep breath. “Verily, you are the blessed one amongst women. You ascended to heaven and are not here to witness the destruction of creation.”

“Are you sure?”

My heart stopped, my breath bated and I stood still as death. The statue had not spoken, yet I knew that it was her voice.

“Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus,” I breathed, expelling the air between my wooden lips.

“Do you know where he is?”

I turned around, very slowly. I had to shield my eyes from the Sun, and even so what I beheld seemed to me a mirage rather than a human, as heat haze swirled around her form. She was slight and short, with rich dark hair, fine features, and deeply tanned skin. If anything, she resembled Our Lady of Częstochowa rather than the candy-coloured, pink-faced Virgin on the plinth.

“My Lady,” I said and bowed. I should have perhaps knelt, but I had knelt before many women and the gesture seemed suggestive. “What” _the fuck_ “are you doing here?” I hesitated for a second or two. “It is you, isn’t it?”

She smiled. “Don’t you know that, Aramis?”

My name sounded sweet from her lips, and I smiled back. “I am astonished. This is of course an understatement.”

“I’m looking for my son. He’s probably in trouble.” She sighed. “Again.”

“I would’ve thought he’s sitting on David’s throne, separating the sheep from the goats.”

“Not until Judgement Day.”

“You mean that wasn’t it?” I flashed my teeth at her. “What are we still waiting for? The sound of the last trumpet?”

She smiled with one corner of her mouth. “There’s still life, here on Earth.”

“Is there?” I asked quietly. “It doesn’t feel like it.” I glanced up, towards Helios. Towards the mad comet that dragged its fiery beard above our heads, a lone star, unconscious and uninhibited.

“There’s you.”

“I am not, strictly speaking, alive.”

“There’s still human life.”

“Really?” My sluggish blood throbbed. “Where?”

“I believe my son might know that.”

“Who is in Heaven.”

“Ah. No, he’s not. There’s been a bit of a family crisis. His father has skedaddled, and Yeshua is somewhere on Earth.”

“What do you mean: skedaddled?”

“He… there isn’t really a good way to express it in human terms. He’s left this plane. He no longer exists in this universe, or even in these dimensions.”

The pang I felt at her words was unexpected. Even though I had long worshipped on the altar of Discord, the One God had always been the eternal Father. I didn’t have to pray to Him, I didn’t even have to think of Him for His presence to give me comfort. For a moment, I knew what Athos felt when his Thunderous Father was devoured by Kronos.

“And He’s left you behind.”

“He’s never been much of a family man. God.”

She was older than humans usually pictured her. In her forties, if I was any judge, with the wiry body of a woman who had unlimited reserves of strength and energy and who, if not for her Assumption, would’ve have happily lived to one hundred and twenty years. Paradoxically, there was nothing outwardly motherly about her, and yet I knew that she’d move Heaven and Earth – literally, considering the circumstances – to find her son.

“I don’t know where he is,” I told her. “But I might be able to locate him.” After all, I had drunk His blood and eaten His flesh many times. My covenant with Athos meant I could always find him. What if my covenant with Jesus did the same?

“How?”

“I should probably drink some of the communion wine,” I murmured. “If Athos hasn’t rampaged through all the cellars yet.”

Her expression was unreadable, but she followed me quietly when I directed my steps towards a cellar where Grimley had previously stacked some of the unbroken bottles. Most of the monasteries on Mt. Athos lay in ruins, but here and there a building had withstood the titanic storms. We’d found a chicken coop with brooding hens, a dairy overrun with very animated cheese, and a well-stocked walk-in freezer the walls of which were barely cracked.

In a small side chapel, I crossed myself, fetched the chalice from the tabernacle and placed it on the altar. The altar was split in two, but enough sacred space remained for me to perform the Eucharist.

“I have taken orders,” I told the Mother of God, who was looking at me funny.

“What are you doing?”

“Don’t you know about transubstantiation?”

“I’m Jewish.”

“Of course.” I closed my eyes and attempted to close my mind to the absurdity of the situation. “This is the blood of your son,” I explained. “The blood of the new covenant. The blood that he shed for us. I will drink it to renew the bond and then… I might be able to find him. But even if this works, I wouldn’t know how to contact him. Even if he did have a phone, the mobile networks have broken down.”

“Don’t worry about that,” said the Holy Virgin. There was a flurry of wings, and a scruffy pigeon dived down from its perch under the roof and landed on her shoulder. “The Holy Ghost will carry the message.”

“Wasn’t he supposed to manifest in the shape of a dove?” The Holy Ghost had several claws missing and an expression of malevolent cunning in his eyes.

“He used to, in the old days. But his shape is dictated by human perception, and nobody knows what a turtle dove looks like any more. They’re as good as extinct, whereas feral pigeons are in ample supply.”

After witnessing the Titan of the Harvest eat his own son, I would’ve said I’d seen it all. But the sight of small Jewish Virgin Mary and her avian sidekick was, in its mundanity, strangely disconcerting.

“I shall now read Mass.” I cleared my throat and focused. “The Lord be with you,” I intoned. “Literally.”

 

**Lecce, Italy, autumn 2017**

And so it came to pass that Jesus escaped the land under water and entered the land under fire. Vulcanus fought valiantly, but the torrents of molten rock that he hurled at the Titans only served to enrage Gaia further. She thundered with wrath, Vesuvius trembled and crumbled, collapsed, and dragged the ancient God of Fire into the deepest pit of Tartarus.

Silently, Jesus and Judas watched the earth and sky burn in the West on their journey towards the eastern shores. The earth beneath the donkey’s hooves sizzled and cracked as sulfuric swamps spread from the epicentre in Naples. “Be of good cheer,” Jesus told his mount, patting his neck. “Be not afraid.” Judas attempted to bolt, but there was nowhere to bolt to, and so he walked meekly, guided by his rider’s hand, and he reached Apulia unscorched. “Oh you of little faith, why did you doubt?” Jesus murmured. He dismounted and, leading the donkey by its makeshift rein, approached the ruins of a chapel outside Lecce. A pigeon huddled on top of the caved-in roof. It spread its wings and flew straight at the Son of God, and for a moment man and bird appeared to be one.

“My Mother, you say?” Jesus said, stroking the grimy feathers. “Mount Athos?” He glanced in the direction of the cliffs. “It looks like you will have to walk on water, Judas.”

But by the time they reached the coast, Jesus had long realised that it would not be necessary to perform this particular miracle. The waters of the Adriatic Sea were gone. He looked up into the devouring eye of the comet that circled in a vicious spiral above his head. It was a star that had gone mad; a blind Titan whose name had long been forgotten even by his own kin and who was driven by nothing but his own insanity.

“Did you suck out the sea?” he asked softly. “Or is Oceanus assembling his forces far away from here?”

Where blue waves had once undulated, smoke and stench billowed from within a dark abyss. At its bottom, bubbles rose and gurgled. Jesus sighed and urged Judas on, down a slope covered in green slime, oil slicks, and the carcasses of rotting fish and humans. Here and there, Jesus saw a survivor: a thrashing body of a marine creature that suffocated and boiled. Barely believing His luck at the sight of such a rich banquet, the Holy Ghost hopped from His perch on Jesus’ shoulder, swooped down on a pandora and feasted on its white flesh. Blinded by the miasma that wafted around them, Judas stumbled over a tangle of algae and plastic bags, but he didn’t complain; he had learned to trust Jesus.

The dead bottom of the sea was depressing. Withered jellyfish, black seaweed, PET bottles, scorched shells of crabs and mussels rustled and crunched underhoof. Tall hills and taller mountains loomed here and there, which once used to be shallow shoals beneath the surface of the sea. A turtle trapped in a six pack ring scrabbled around the bottom of the sea in panicked bewilderment. Jesus picked it up gently, tore the rigid plastic with his teeth and released the reptile in a puddle of seawater. Judas reached a fissure at the bottom of the bowl and stopped dead. In its black pit throbbed a mysterious life. Snakelike, a tentacle groped around the edge, brushing its suckers against the donkey’s off fore. Judas leapt back, shaking his mane and braying desperately. The echo reverberated eerily between rocks and skeletons of sunken ships.

“It’s all right,” Jesus said softly. “It won’t hurt you. It’s just as bewildered and scared as you are.”

Judas treaded carefully around the spiky, thorny shells that lay scattered on the ground, shimmering in all colours of the rainbow. He dodged a tyre, a skeleton in a lifejacket, and a corroded fridge. He stepped over crabs that were feeding on a dying shark. Occasionally, he sank to his knees in grey sludge, but the calm voice and hands of his rider pulled him out and onwards, onwards, as they meandered between sunken treasures of old and garbage heaps of new.

At last, the ground sloped again, and they emerged into the light of the Sun, who beat down on them in merciless fury, mummifying the remains of humans and animals with his touch. And yet: the Albanian coast was the Promised Land. The torrefied Greece was the land where milk and honey flow. And then: Athos, and his Mother’s longing embrace.

 

**Mount Athos, Greece, winter 2017**

It had been winter, an eternal winter. The last of the Gods burrowed into his thick, wool blanket, and tried hard not to think about time standing still. How long had it been December? It was impossible to tell, but he knew, he could smell it, the endless December air, even in the dry heat. It was as if Gaia had somehow turned her ass towards Helios and whichever of her Titanic children had been responsible for turning her axis fell asleep on the job, probably drunk on Olympian blood.

“How can I feel so cold, Sophia,” Discord had spoken, pouring the last drops of a bottle down his throat, “when it’s so fucking hot outside?” The owl cooed softly and wiggled her feathery bum, remaining perched comfortably in between his feet. “Do you miss them too?” The owl’s ears appeared to droop in solidarity.

Elsewhere on his mountain, the Goddess of Women still slept, as he had slept once upon a time. They said no harm shall come to him here, but that had also not been entirely true. Athos picked up a new bottle and uncorked it, bringing the neck to his lips and allowing his tongue to caress the narrow rim. Wherever his one surviving brother had gone, he wasn’t showing his face, that much was certain. And were the both of them not licking their wounds like dogs, each in their own way?

“Why aren’t they coming for me, Sophia?” he asked the owl. She hopped higher onto his lap and sat there as he stroked her crest feathers, watching him with soulful, if vaguely judgemental, eyes. “Perhaps I’ve convinced them that Discord is no threat to them either?” The owl pecked at his hand. “You’re right, I’m just not important enough to kill.”

The hanging vines over the entrance swayed in the wind and the sound of footsteps brought the drunken deity out of his semi-stupor. “Take one more step closer and I’ll blow your fucking head off!” he slurred, eyes casting about for the bag which still held a number of things that could potentially go Boom! “That simply would not do,” he giggled to himself, still stroking the owl’s downy feathers. “It would not do to blow off the flitterhead, would it, Sophia?”

The owl gazed at him with clear disapproval and a healthy amount of distrust. It was easy to imagine this exact look on his belated sister’s face. Athena would certainly think him ten different flavors of idiot.

“I should have stayed dead last time,” Athos sighed.

That was when a tuneful voice, but not at all the voice he’d been expecting, sounded like the trumpets of Jericho outside the mouth of his hermit’s dwelling.

“Athos, come out!”

Athos stirred. A power beyond his control - perhaps the power of curiosity - propelled him to his feet. He picked up a bottle and a handgun from the ground, let Sophia hop up onto his shoulder, and took the requisite steps out into the threatening rays of Helios, shielding his irises from the intrusive light.

His pupils narrowed and his eyes widened at the sight before him. A man in a threadbare t-shirt and torn jeans, with the long, tangled hair of a hippy, and soft, kind, hazel eyes, sitting astride a bored-looking donkey.

“The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head,” spoke Jesus Christ, to which the Son of Zeus replied, “You are absolutely fucking shitting me!”

***

“No,” I said and turned my back on Jesus.

“You’re being quite unreasonable, and dare I say, melodramatic. I thought you and I rather got _on_ when we met in the Underworld.”

“Get off my fucking mountain, Christ. What the hell are you even doing here?”

“I was led here by the Holy Ghost, who was sent by my Mother. I was hoping to find surviving humans, but so far all I’ve found was… Well, you. But, in all honesty, I’m rightly chuffed to see you!”

“Your Mother? The Virgin Mary?”

“Oh yes, she is here too. In this, her special garden.”

“I made that story up, you know,” I bristled. The Athonite myth of the Virgin who had come to the peninsula and asked her Son to grant that it be her own garden. All that was just a cockamamey tale to keep other vaginas out of my realm.

“You do not have to be this way. I thought you and I had really bonded in Hades.” Jesus Christ looked almost hurt. I vaguely remembered all the times I’ve wanted to punch him, but standing face to face with him, this Son of Man, I once again felt nothing but pity, like on the day that I beheld him crucified. “My Father is gone now too, you know.”

“Your Father’s gone? My Father was _eaten_! By his own father!” I exploded. “Your family was ever nothing but the Diet Coke, skim milk version of mine! Everything your adherents have ever done was a watered down melange of our past Olympic glory!”

Jesus merely stood before me, seemingly unperturbed, his arms folded over the worn zipper of his Levy’s. One of us clearly has meditated more than the other of late, I surmised. “Follow me!” he said with unaccounted-for authority.

“I am not one of your lovelorn disciples,” I snickered. “If you want to cop a feel in the burning bush somewhere, go find yourself a monkling. Surely, there must be some left somewhere on this Gods-forsaken planet.”

“Just, come with me,” Christ repeated with truly Christlike patience. “I’m going to heal your stepmother. It might be nice for her to have family around when she wakes up.”

At his words, I laughed so hard that tears burst from my eyes, although as soon as they began to fall, I could no longer tell whether it was for mirth or out of grief that I was weeping. Sophia fluttered off my shoulder as I fell to my knees, dropping my bottle of wine and the loaded gun, both of which I had still held this entire time clenched in my hands. Jesus sank down next to me, wrapped my shaking body into his arms, and also wept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Audience, did you notice the logo in Vladic's car? If you didn't, go back, notice it, and admire Vladic's brain XD
> 
> Here he is, the sulking hermit in front of his kelion:  
> 


	4. Oceanus

**Mount Athos, winter 2017**

From his vantage point on the supporting beam across the vaulted ceiling, the Holy Ghost enjoyed a very domestic scene, such that would have warmed His heart had He actually had a heart. The depictions weren’t exactly accurate on that account when they drew Him as a glowing dove with the Sacred Heart beaming from his breast. Ghosts did not have hearts, Holy or otherwise.

The Grigori was serving tea. He did not have the six wings, nor the four faces that the Holy Ghost had come to associate with angels, but he did exhibit the patience and charity of spirit not given to mere mortals. The tea emitted a soft, herbal aroma, and it floated up to the ceiling in alluring tendrils.

“All children are like this, aren’t they?” Miriam, or the Virgin Mary as she was most frequently known, had been saying, while gently stirring her tea. “I know he’s a fully grown man, but a mother worries. Gone for months he was, never even so much as sent up a smoke signal!” She shook her head in growing disappointment. “Why, I could have been dead, lying on the floor - dead, like your family, could’ve been. But would he know?”

“Mmm,” Hera nodded sagely. “Men are so self absorbed, my dear,” she patted Miriam’s hand reassuringly.

Across the table, the Son of Man and the Son of Zeus exchanged a brief glance and quickly directed their eyes towards their respective biscuits. The Son of Belial, or whatever had birthed the bloodsucking abomination in the corner, had not even lifted his eyes from his book. From where the Holy Ghost was sitting, it appeared to be a dog-eared copy of the _Lives of Saints_.

“And I worry about him! I know he’s a God, or Son Thereof, but a mother worries,” Miriam went on, dipping her own biscuit into the tea in a somewhat militant fashion. “What if he’s not eating, I ask myself. He can barely take care of himself, you know. Once he ate nothing for forty nights and forty days, why it gives me goosebumps just to think of it,” she clucked. “My boy can’t take care of himself to save his life! Why, he would die of hunger in front of a totally full pantry!”

“Moooooooom,” Jesus Christ whined and pulled sheepishly on the stray curls that were escaping from his haphazard manbun.

“The Last Supper?” the Mother of God continued, undaunted. “The boy didn't eat a morsel, he only fed his friends. Even the traitor!”

“ _Ima_ , I’m begging you,” Jesus attempted to interject. The Son of Zeus merely snorted at him from across the table and remained stoically mute.

“Oh, you’re not alone in this suffering,” Hera reassured, casting a rather warm eye upon her departed husband’s progeny. “Why that one over there? Well, he sure does go and get himself killed every now and then. Last time he stayed dead for a century and a half, made quite the scene with our relatives down below. But then he really rallied and killed his sister and took over her job, so that was a surprise." Hera’s smile was warm as the flames of the hearth and wide as the half-moon.

Athos shifted in his seat uncomfortably but refused to engage. His owl hopped merrily on the table, pecking at the biscuit crumbs and hooting contentedly.

"You know he is only my stepson,” Hera spoke while sipping her own tea daintily, “but I must say he's really grown on me. I think I like him a lot more than his brutish brother Heracles or that whore Helen."

Athos and Jesus both opened their mouths in apparent protest, of what the Holy Ghost was not to know, because they had exchanged sheepish looks and immediately resealed both their lips. The vampire in the corner, in the meantime, emitted a sigh so melancholy as to make the Holy Ghost surmise he probably had never had a mother.

"Stepchildren are children too,” Miriam replied with a gentle smile. “My Yeshua was only Joseph's stepson, but he was loved and cared for, and Joseph taught him a profession."

“I daresay I taught him a thing or two myself,” Hera said, this time meeting the Son of Zeus’ gaze head on. “Darling, you’ve barely touched your tea.”

“Not thirsty,” the God of Discord replied curtly.

“What about your husband?” Hera looked back towards the corner where the vampire insisted on pretending he was not part of the discussion.

“He’s not… we’re not…” Athos averted his gaze and attempted to feed the entire rest of his biscuit to his owl.

“After how many centuries?” Hera sighed. “Typical man. Wants to reap all the pleasures of the flesh and never putting a ring on it.”

The vampire bit his lips and closed his book with a rather loud slap.

“Oh, I assure you, Madam,” Athos spoke with a mischievous twinkle in his dark eye, “I have most certainly put a ring on him. More than once.”

“Jesus!” the vampire exclaimed.

“What?” said Christ.

“Oh, not this bit,” Athos shook his head. “This isn’t turning into a Mel Brooks movie!”

“She’s the bloody Goddess of Marriage, isn’t she?” Aramis exclaimed. “Can’t exactly blame her for being judgmental.”

“And yet that’s not even her best quality,” the God of Discord mused.

“My Yeshua had a boyfriend too,” Miriam chimed in, cutting across the awkward discourse like the great soothsayer that she was. “Lovely boy he was, John. Why, I went on a trip with him once to this very mountain, if I remember correctly. Went a bit batty in his old age, but I liked him. Very nice Jewish boy. A proper mensch.”

“John?” Aramis had risen and circled around the table, until he could hiss into his consort’s ear. “Which John?”

“The _beloved_ ,” Discord hissed back.

“You utter shitbag,” the vampire threw at his lover. “You let them crucify a fellow admirer of sodomy? Well done, Discord, well done!”

Miriam’s hand shook and she placed down her teacup lest it spill over the embroidered white tablecloth. “That was _you_!”

Hera sighed and cast a downright enamoured look in her stepson’s direction. "I told you, that boy is trouble."

“You know,” an unobtrusive voice had cut in through the uncomfortable silence, “I heard a rumor that the Christian Saints were rising from the dead.” All eyes turned towards the Grigori. “Is that true, Your Holy Motherness?”

“Please, call me Miriam,” the Mother of God insisted. Next to her, the Mother of Many Gods resumed sipping her tea. The Holy Ghost had to admit, it appeared to be doing her a world of good, judging by the blush that was coming back to her gaunt cheeks. “And yes, I myself saw Saint Anthony talking to fish again as I traveled here.”

“How _did_ you travel here?” Discord inquired, happy for the change of topic.

“Oh,” Miriam laughed, “Why that’s an easy answer. _He_ prayed to me.” She nodded towards the vampire. “Your boyfriend… partner? Your… priest?”

“Aramis,” Athos supplied.

“ _Centuries_ together,” Hera lamented to Miriam again, “and not even wed.” Her head shook in stark disapproval, loosening some of the tendrils piled up on top of her head like a teeming beehive.

“It’s not like it was even _legal_ until recently,” Athos snapped, finally appearing to lose his considerable cool. The Holy Ghost briefly contemplated defecating on his head, if only in vengeance for that crucifixion. But that wouldn’t be very Christlike or dignified, so He remained upon His perch.

“Yes, it’s quite sad,” Miriam sighed. “So much progress and now most humans are dead and poor Saint Anthony has to preach to the fishes again.”

“Why on earth are the Saints coming back?” Aramis inquired. “I understand that I prayed to you, Madam, in your sacred garden, but surely so have many others before me. It cannot be the power of prayer that is bringing them back?”

“No, it is death,” Jesus joined the discussion, at last shaking off the pall of embarrassment cast upon him by his _Ima’s_ loving words. “Death on a mass scale, to be precise. It unleashes very powerful energy that coupled with desperate supplication can lead to these isolated occurrences.”

“So you’re back,” Athos began to enumerate. “Your Mother’s back. And now your Saints are back. What about _our_ Saints? We raised humans to apotheosis long before your adherents were doing it. I want to bring back the Divi,” he declared, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms.

“You want to bring back the Divi just because you’re in a pique?” Aramis intoned, beginning to stir his own tea methodically. “And which ones, pray tell? Hadrian perhaps? And Alexander?”

“They would be _useful_ ,” Hera mused. “In a war.”

“They would doubtlessly be useful in a war,” Athos shrugged, “but alas, I do not see how we could bring them back without their mortal remains. Hadrian’s ashes were scattered by the Visigoths in the fifth century, only his tomb remained, but it's all under water now. As for Alexander… well, we might as well go seek him in Elysium!”

“Then whom?” Jesus asked helpfully. “I am the resurrection and the life. Show me the man, and I shall restore him.”

“I’m not doing this in front of your mother,” Athos snapped, “But you and I are having words about resurrection later!” He shook his head aside at Hera. “Honestly! You would think he had invented it.”

“There, there,” the goddess’ hand reached across the table and patted her wayward stepchild’s forearm in an unexpected caress. “You are quick to ire, just like your dear brother.”

“Why is she still alive?” Aramis hissed into the Grigori’s ear.

“Because my master is true and pure of heart,” the Olympian guardian whispered back. “Unlike the company he keeps.”

“If we’re not bringing back Alexander,” Aramis continued aloud, “which, I admit, would have been a rare delight…”

“You can’t eat Alexander…”

“... And if we can only resurrect those whose mortal remains we can get our hands on, whom does that leave?”

“Antinous!” Grimley proclaimed with alacrity.

“Antinous!” Hera clapped her hands in a sudden outburst of glee. “The pretty catamite can fuck the Titans into submission!”

Athos vociferously rubbed the bridge of his nose, while Aramis’ eyes transformed into two burning planets that only hovered in his eye sockets by the will of some unknown force.

“He was mummified, he is the best preserved face of antiquity, far outstripping both Alexander and Hadrian,” the Grigori continued, as if he’d had this speech planned for centuries in advance. “He was worshipped for hundreds of years after his death. In fact, he was associated with Osiris upon his deification, who himself is a god of the afterlife and… resurrection.”

“Ha,” Athos said, looking pointedly at Jesus.

“He still had active cults on the internet last I checked, which means his divinity could still be quite potent. And we know where his remains are buried,” Grimley finished, straightening up and preening like the man whose time has come. “Kyrios, shall we go to Hadrian’s Villa again?”

“Excavating Hadrian’s Villa would take months,” Athos said with a touch of despondency. “And how would we even get there? We don’t have a car, planes are all grounded, trains don’t run…”

“Athos,” Aramis attempted to interrupt.

“And we can’t exactly ask the Anemoi for help now, can we? They’re fucking Titans! We can’t all ride Judas all the way back to Italy!”

“Athos.”

“Even so, it would probably be our best chance at recovery. And as he was venerated as both a Roman and an Egyptian deity, I suppose there’s a chance he might have genuine God mojo left and, to be frank, we’re up shit creek without a paddle - pardon me, Ladies, - and can use all the help we can get...”

“Athos!”

“Really, Aramis, is now the best time for one of your jealous fits?” Athos slammed his fist on the table and drew his eyebrows into a severe line.

“You cannot go to Hadrian’s Villa,” Aramis said, his hands falling limply at his sides.

“Why on earth not?”

“Because,” the vampire clenched and unclenched his fists and bit down on his lower lip. “Because, he isn’t _there_.”

“Of course he’s there…” Athos stopped, his breath escaping like an errant bird, leaving his lips parted while his eyes focused upon the pale face of his lover. “Chyortik!” he exclaimed in a thunderous voice. “What have you _done_!”

The Holy Ghost flew out the window. He had seen and heard quite enough ferkakta bullshit for one night.

 

**Villa Adriana, Tivoli, 1663**

The General of the Jesuits stood in the shade of an olive tree, his hands clasped behind his back, his expression sly and pensive at once. His eyes were fixed on the patch of earth where swarthy peasants were slaving away under the rays of the Italian sun. They had been hired to excavate the former dwelling of a Roman emperor – once full of splendour and nubile young men, now a maze of crumbling walls. Statues of naked gods and warriors and of fully dressed maidens and goddesses were being loaded on carts. They were a gift from the General to the Holy Father; the Vatican was a much better backdrop for their graceful Hellenic lines and exposed genitals than this seat of past glories.

“Sic transit gloria mundi,” whispered the General, watching four wiry rustics heave a Ganymede onto the cart and swaddle him with straw. It was his wish and his command to send as many statues of this particular conquest of Zeus to the Holy See. The cardinals and bishops would greatly appreciate the artistic rendering of the adolescent Catamitus’ members (virile or otherwise). One day soon, once he ascended the Throne of Petrus, the Black Pope would present his collection to the Son of Zeus, as proof of the power of the Church over the ancient pagan deities.

“The men have found something, Your Excellency,” the Provincial Father informed him. “The messenger says it’s a tomb.”

The General tore himself away from the sight of an Antinous that was being dragged behind a donkey. “Lead on,” he said with an elegant gesture of his hand, and light caught in the ring on his finger. They descended a flight of steps, past the ancient bathhouse that had once been the setting of many revels and feats of sodomy, and reached the last resting place of a formerly revered and beloved…

“Mummy,” said the Provincial Father. “It’s an Egyptian mummy.”

The Black Pope resisted the urge to crouch down and touch the corpse. He would not lower himself to its level. Even though he’d barely cast a glance at the grave goods, he knew with absolute certainty whose remains were concealed beneath the dirty wrappings. With a gesture, he ordered the workers to lift the body carefully onto a stone slab, pushed the bandages around the mummy’s arm aside with the tip of his forefinger, and read the inscription on the golden bracelet.

“It’s Latin,” said the Provincial Father.

“Yes.” The General pulled out an embroidered handkerchief, wiped his hand and dropped the soiled fabric into an acolyte’s hand.

“It’s the remains of one of their so-called ‘divi’,” said the Provincial Father.

“It’s Hadrian’s catamite,” said the Black Pope.

The Provincial Father wrinkled his nose. “Do you wish him to be thrown into the pond? The crocodiles will deal with it, and the fish will do the rest.”

“No,” the General said after a thoughtful pause. His black eyes were glued to the death mask, as if the sight of the smooth cheeks and lush lips aroused some dormant memories and passions in him. “Put him on a separate cart and cover him well. There is a safer last resting place for him than the crocodiles.”

Giant grey waves of the Atlantic Ocean, clawing voraciously at the rocks of Belle-Île. Cold waters of the north, ruled by the Breton Princess Dahut who had made a crown of her vices and taken for her pages the seven capital sins. She would welcome the pretty Divus with open arms in the sunken city of Ys; she would keep him out of trouble and away from the source of his powers. Away from the lands where he’d once walked and was venerated as a God. Away from the lands where the Son of Zeus had swept him away in his arms and taught him how to kneel, how to worship and how to be worshipped in return.

 

**Mount Athos, winter 2017**

Even though Helios had gone to do whatever it was that he did at night (scorch the other half of the planet, I supposed), the air outside was still arid and hot. Sophia had flown off my shoulder and had set up position as sentinel at the top of the tallest olive tree in the orchard. The yard smelled vaguely of donkey shit.

“Ares!” I called out into the night sky. “Hades’ balls, where the fuck are you?”

I walked up a narrow path leading into the orchard and found a rock underneath one of the trees. The sky was black, no sign of Porthos’ Aunt Selene anywhere, no silver light to kiss the sandy bottom of what had once been the Aegean sea. There wasn’t even any wind, as if Nature had abandoned us entirely.

“I can’t do this without you,” I said, addressing my absent sibling. “I can’t do this alone. _Fuck_ , I feel so alone,” I confessed to Nyx, for she was the Goddess of Night. She had been born of Chaos, and surely she had not been dead for we were shrouded in darkness, which meant Erebus too yet lived. “Ares?” I tried again, knowing it was an exercise in futility. “I don’t know what the fuck we’re doing. Your mother? She’s being _nice_ to me.” Sophia hooted softly somewhere above my head, but no sound of furtive paws came down the secluded path. “Where did you go?” I asked, letting my head drop heavily onto my folded forearms.

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” came the reply. I lifted my head and smiled. Of course, attempting to summon the one and getting the other. Despite their antipathy, Ares and Aramis had ever had more in common than either would ever care to admit.

“I can’t do this right now, chyortik, I’m too angry with you.”

The gravel beneath his feet crunched closer. “I know you are.” The footsteps stopped right behind me. He hovered over my head like the bloody Holy Ghost over our tea. “But I’ve also learned over the years that allowing your anger to fester is never a good idea. And so here I am. Whatever you have to say to me, just say it.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I opened my mouth and let the breath out with the tension. On second thought, who was I kidding, the tension wasn’t going anywhere. I opened my eyes and stared out into the star-speckled black skies.

“You... threw him... into the Gulf... of Morbihan,” I said as calmly as I could, under the circumstances. The circumstances being precisely that I wanted to rip off his head and reattach it backwards.

“It was a long time ago,” he said, sitting down on the rock next to me. At that precise moment, the rock wasn’t big enough for the both of us so I leapt to my feet.

“You threw him into the goddamn sea! We were together when you did this! You and I, we weren’t _on a break_ ,” I went on, putting air quotes around “on a break” for good measure. “We weren’t in the fucking friendzone! You weren’t angry at me for some reason known only to yourself, were you? What reason could you _possibly_ have had to do such a thing!”

Aramis had jumped up off the rock as well. “He was in your fucking garden!” he exclaimed. “And the _friendzone_ ,” it was his turn to use the air quotes, “as you so humorously call it, was not so long in the past that I had forgotten it! And besides, this was centuries before you’d told me your melancholy tale of Antinoan woe - how was I supposed to know what he had really meant to you?”

“You’re not supposed to throw people’s mummies into the sea: you need no better reason than that!”

“You’d been perfectly safe in there for a century and a half. I figured he’d be safer with your Uncle Poseidon than surrounded by Jesuits running amok in Hadrian’s villa!” He brushed his hair out of his face and even in the moonless darkness, I could still see his descended fangs.

“Oh, that’s…” I almost laughed. Almost. “Do not pretend, sweet flittermouse, that this had _anything_ to do with his remains’ safety!”

“I would never do so _now_ ,” he said, taking a step towards me. I, in turn, took a step back. “Please, don’t be like this. Your caveside sulking was insufferable enough. I cannot have you hate me over the remains of a boy you were fucking for a few years millennia ago. That isn’t fair, that isn’t _just_. Surely, you must see that.”

He wasn’t entirely wrong, only I had felt so hollow. As if Rhea had opened me up the same way she did Aphrodite, and scooped out my heart and every other organ worth noting, leaving me an eviscerated shell. What use had I for fairness and justice at that moment? Besides, my sister Dike, the Goddess of Justice, had clearly been dead as well. Long before we arrived on Olympus.

“He meant something to me,” I said, fighting back tears that threatened to overwhelm me.

“I know,” Aramis whispered, reaching his hand out to tentatively touch mine.

I drew back. “I’ve lost so much. We’ve all lost so much, I… I just wanted to have _one thing_ back. No matter how insignificant.”

“Then we’ll go to Bretagne,” he said with firm resolve. “We’ll go to Vannes, if it is even still there, and we will find him and bring him back.”

I looked up to the obsidian skies and asked, “ _How_?”

“I… I don’t know,” he admitted, finally succeeding in taking my hand in his. “But you need this, so I’m going to do this for you. That’s what Grimley would do, right?”

“You’re not a Grigori,” I said with a poorly suppressed pout.

He smiled and his teeth were small and harmless again in the starlight. “No,” he conceded, “I am definitely no angel.”

***

Google Maps no longer worked. The men and women in the space stations had looked into the heart of the universe, and had seen the Cosmos behind the Chaos: the ultimate order, the order before creation, before the tohu va vohu that was the condition of the Earth before God spoke _Let there be light._ The order before humans, before gods, before the Big Bang and before the banishment of Titans into Tartarus.

The truth, as I’d so often had occasion to observe, was not out there. It was not the universal flame to kindle the intellect of men on their path towards Enlightenment. It _was_ the tohu va vohu, where the Big Bang and Kronos devouring his children existed in the same dimensions and where the giant sphere of hot plasma was also a hulking humanoid in a chariot of fire.

They had perished, the men and women who had wanted to explore the stars and who ended their life locked in a metal box filled with the latest in human technology, watching primordial proto-deities rise in the vacuum of space.

Since satellite communication was down, I was forced to resort to analogous cartography to plot our route. Fortunately, the keepers of Athos’ legacy were a conservative lot, and an atlas to them was a bound volume of charts and maps rather than a Titan who bore the sky on his shoulders.

In spite of myself, I cast a glance to the south-west, towards the north coast of Africa where the Atlas Mountains stood. Had they too sprouted limbs and a consciousness, as slow and eternal as celestial rocks, and were the skies about to fall on our heads, as was foretold in The Adventures of Asterix?

“Transport is ready, _M. l’abbé_.” Grimley had approached me silently and added, looking me up and down and raising his eyebrows delicately. “If you permit me the remark, it is good to see that you’ve found Jesus again. It’s almost like the good old days.”

“Careful, Grigori,” I said without raising my gaze from the books and papers in front of me. “Angel or otherwise, I know how to locate arteries.”

“I was merely commending you on your excellent fashion choice, Aramis,” Grimley said. “The monastic garb suits you exceedingly well. Kyrios thinks so too, I’m sure.”

“You better hurry up and do the laundry.” I capitulated at last, looked up and narrowed my eyes at him. “I do not wish to go on a road trip to the Bretagne dressed up as an Athosian monk.”

“Kyrios and your good self know best, of course,” Grimley said in a voice carefully calibrated to convey just the right amount of meekness and subservience, that is to say none at all. “But is it really wise to leave what appears to be a safe haven in this world of confusion to go all the way to Brittany? Times are uncertain,” he added in a melancholy tone. “Alas.”

“Your Kyrios wishes us to go,” I said.

“Ah yes. I understand that much.” The diabolical domestic nodded gravely. “His motives appear to me quite plausible. Relatable even. However, if you pardon my curiosity, I am not quite sure how to account for your willingness to embark on this journey of no return?” A delicate upward inflection curled the end of the sentence, like the flick of the tip of a cat’s tail.

“There’s nothing for us here.”

“There’s nothing for us out there.”

“Your Kyrios begs to differ.”

“And do you follow him merely out of habit? Even unto death?” He neatly dodged the globe I hurled at his head. “Or are these pangs of conscience I detect in your behaviour, your Black Holiness?”

I rose to my feet and he stepped back with alacrity, watching my eyes.

“My motives are my own, Grigori,” I said in a low voice.

“Doubtlessly.” He bowed. “But is it _wise_?”

“Wisdom is dead,” I said. “And your job is to ease our path and get us the equipment we need.”

“There’s still the owl,” he shot back. “And I have found you a bus.” He sounded offended.

“Good. That’s a start.” I clasped my hands behind my back and walked towards him, slowly. “Did you also find petrol? Because if I understand the situation correctly, the Greek mainland has been pretty thoroughly destroyed. Harrowed, as one may say. Even if we were to find a petrol station, and the fuel had not all seeped into the surrounding soil, it will be contaminated by seawater.”

“I assumed your lord will take care of that,” Grimley said. “Our Lord, that is. The Jewish boy.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He can turn water into wine, can’t he? Petrol should be a piece of cake.”

I showed him my teeth, and he fled. But not without a few parting remarks on the burden of catering for a crew as motley as ours, and could I, in my capacity as Supreme Ruler of the Society of Jesus, have a word with His Messiahship and ask him to perform the miracle of the ham and sausage to feed the half dozen?

“Or the miracle of the falafel, if he prefers. It’s just that the Goddess of Marriage is used to feasting on ambrosia every day, and it’s increasingly difficult to prepare dinner to suit everyone’s palate, saving your bloodsucking presence.”

“The Goddess of Marriage can go fuck herself.”

“To be sure, Your Worshipful Excellency. Still, she was saying only this morning that she has quite a hankering for a delicious plump-breasted pigeon.” He turned on his heel and departed.

I looked up at the Holy Ghost. He looked down at me and blinked.

“I can’t say I blame her,” I said to no-one in particular, watching Grimley’s retreating back. “Don’t pretend it wasn’t your idea to resurrect Antinous, Grigori,” I muttered under my breath. “You’ve had the plan ready for centuries, didn’t you? I wonder what the boy had done to warrant such devotion.”

It was not for Antinous’ sake that I returned to my maps to plan our journey. I’d ruled we were to take the Balkan route, as those lands had always maintained strong ties to their pagan roots and were as guarded by ancient demons over whom Hellenic deities held no sway. The Bretagne was Marie’s realm. She might have perished in the war, but corporeal or not – the nymph would always be a valuable ally. I would find her, even if I had to dive into the Loire; even if I had to sacrifice the Virgin Mary to summon the nymph to Earth. And with her by my side, there was a chance I could keep Athos alive.

 

**Vannes, France, autumn 2017**

The Bishop of Vannes read Mass. It was the humans’ go-to solution in times of disasters, and many a prayer for the victims and their families had been reblogged and retweeted on Tumblr and Twitter when the Titans first struck. By the time humanity realised that what they were dealing with was, in fact, an honest-to-gods apocalypse, it was too late to come up with a new strategy. They had already tried breeding like rabbits, enthusiastically encouraged to do so by spokesmen of various religions. In their despair, they stuck to prayer in the hope that this time, _this time_ their god would actually listen and help.

“Idiots,” said Marie. Tall, loose-limbed and blessed with the looks of a young Emmanuelle Béart, she stood at the quay Eric Tabarly, listening to the frantic sound of church bells and frowning at the teeming, filthy waters. “They’ll never learn.”

“They’re going extinct,” Vlad the Impaler said and sighed heavily. “This is their last comfort.”

“And good fucking riddance!” Marie swirled around, and the water behind her back crested and foamed. The left side of her face was marred by eczema, starting at the hairline and disappearing under the collar of her shirt. “Praying, that’s all they’re good for. They should’ve done something. Like stop polluting the environment!”

“Come,” Vlad said. “Let’s find a human and ask her to serve you an eau de vie.”

“What about you?”

“I’d prefer something stronger.”

“Any good?” Marie asked later with a smirk when they were seated in an abandoned café on the promenade. Dracula was wiping his mouth with an embroidered handkerchief.

“Yes, very nice.” He appreciatively watched the girl who stood a few yards away with a sweet gentle smile on her face. “Quite tasty.”

“I never understood your proclivity for virgins,” Marie said. “I don’t believe you can taste it in their blood.”

“It’s not the virginity per se, that’s nonsense,” Dracula waved a hand dismissively. “But there is something quite irresistible about the ingénue, all that radiant innocence and potential for corruption. It makes the blood very sweet. Not to mention they’re so impressionable. Now this one,” he raised his hand again and the girl rushed over, eager to please. “You like me, don’t you, my dear?” he said with a smile that brought to mind his uncle Aramis. She nodded, gazing at him with stars in her eyes. “And you trust me? Good, good. Now be a good girl and run to your friends and tell them about me and how interesting and intriguing I am. Don’t be upset, there’s no need. We shall meet again.”

“Humans are _idiots_ ,” Marie reiterated emphatically. “Hah! You didn’t even bother to hide your teeth. You could tell her you’re a vampire who wants to drink her blood and she’d just think it’s romantic and edgy. They deserve the Titans stomping all over them, the dirty little apes. I should’ve known this arrangement,” she gestured down on herself, “wouldn’t work in the long run, I never even liked monkeys.”

“Marie.” Vlad the Impaler said. “I’ve never known you so angry.”

“What’re you talking about? I’ve been angry before.”

“Yes, but not all the time. You don’t just get angry occasionally, it’s part of your personality. Of _this_ personality.”

“You’d be angry too if you’d been born from a river that is full of poisons. You weren’t there the last times I died of what I now know were autoimmune diseases. I thought it was because I had angered the gods and they punished me for my transgressions. But it turns out it was because humans had been dumping toxic waste into rivers.” She scratched the side of her neck. “This is what you get when you cling to a human body. Marion never understood. Her corporeal form was like a dress that she donned and discarded at will, like the fashion she designed.”

Dracula looked sheepish. The vampire had a body that’d been born 590 years ago and only grown stronger after his death. “You don’t want to give it up, do you?” he said shyly. “It’s a very nice one.”

To his surprise, Marie laughed – a bright, honest laugh, like in the old days. “Oh Vladic,” she murmured and took his hand in hers. “You are such a sweet boy, you know that?”

Dracula blushed. “I have you and Marion to thank for it. You taught me good manners,” he said. “So did Athos and Aramis of course.”

“Of course,” Marie’s voice held a sarcastic edge. “Have you been in touch with Discord and the doctor?”

“Not lately. Not much since they’ve left Berkeley. Aramis shared pics of some lesser demons that he hunted down in Africa, but then he stopped posting and, well, you know how it is. I’ve been busy, and friends drop off the social radar all the time.”

“You’re so young,” Marie sighed. “You haven’t really learned the value of keeping in touch with your kind.”

“Do you keep in touch with Marion?”

“She’s left,” Marie said curtly. “She tried to take me with her, but I’m not like her. I need humans.”

Dracula stared intently into his cup of coffee, as if attempting to divine the future in the frothy milk.

“They’re probably still around somewhere,” Marie said in the light tone of a person changing the subject. “They can’t exactly die.”

“Olympus has fallen, you said so yourself,” Vlad said.

“We don’t know that Athos was anywhere near Olympus.”

“Of course he was,” Vlad said, his eyes agleam with an unearthly light. “Running to his family’s aid is exactly what Athos did, and Uncle Aramis wasn’t far behind.”

“Aramis never cared about the Olympians,” Marie shrugged in assumed nonchalance.

“He cared about Athos. Uncle Aramis always comes to Athos’ rescue, no matter what.”

“So what you are saying is that Aramis and Athos are dead?” Marie raised her eyebrows in an expression of mock-innocence.

“They’re not answering their phones,” Vlad said.

“They might be somewhere with no service.”

“For months?”

“What do you suggest we do, Vlad?” Marie said. “Do you want me to track them down for you? When they could be anywhere on Earth and beyond? Is that what you want me to do?”

“I thought you had means of finding people. You are not limited to human communication networks,” Vlad said. “Neither am I, admittedly, but wolves and bats only get you so far.” He paused and continued heatedly: “You’ve been friends with them for centuries. I thought you cared. Would you abandon me too if I didn’t answer my phone?”

“No.” Marie shook her head. “Don’t do that. Don’t ever try emotional blackmail, it doesn’t work on me.”

“The Titans will come after you too, you know,” Vlad said. “You think you’re safe here, in the Bretagne, because the land and waters had belonged to you for millennia. But the Titans don’t care.”

“What do _you_ know about the Titans?”

“Only what I’ve taught myself.” Vlad’s eyes burned as if he tried to immolate Marie with their blaze. “You think I’m still the ignorant Transylvanian strigoi I was in the nineteenth century, but I’m not. I have read the old stories, and I’ve tried to understand. The Titans are forces of nature. They might’ve gone after Olympus first, because that’s where their descendants lived. But that doesn’t mean they’re done. You’re used to thinking you’re invulnerable, Marie, but your ability to turn to water won’t save you now. When Oceanus wins, all water will be under his control.”

“Not the rivers,” Marie said. “They’re the domain of the nymphs and the river gods.”

“He’ll overcome the nymphs, if he wants to,” Vlad said. “Trust me. I was the commander of an army once, I see how this is going to play out. He’s flooded all of Africa just to prevent the ancient gods that are still powerful there from taking up arms against him. The Norse gods are lying low because they don’t want to attract attention. They’re afraid of the Titans, and you know that the Germanic types are usually the first ones in line for a good war. On the bright side, before I left England I heard that Bridget of Kildare is back.”

“The ability to turn water into beer is going to be a great help against the personification of universal powers,” said Marie.

“Her prayers stop wind and rain,” said Vlad. “So far, Ireland has been spared.”

“So far,” Marie echoed ironically. She sighed. “You’re right, Vlad. The Titans didn’t just rise to destroy Olympus.”

“What can we do?”

“I am of the stock of the morgens of Bretagne, who are as ancient as the Titans,” Marie said in a low, serious voice. “The Breton waters might’ve merged with that of ondines and sirens, but unlike them, the morgens were born at the dawn of time. I believe I might have some clout with Gaia.”

“And if all goes to hell in a handbasket,” Vlad said after a brief silence, “We’ll find Marion, and she can sneak us into Fairy.”

“She can’t.” Marie shook her head. “What? Fairies have a sense of self-preservation. Their gates are barred, they don’t want anything to do with this.”

“So it’s up to us to save everyone,” said Vlad. “Interesting. I’ve never been a hero.”

“We won’t save everyone,” Marie said. “We might not save _anyone_. If we’re lucky, we’ll still have a human consciousness when all this is over.”

Silence fell around the table. In the distance, the bells of the cathedral chanted their mournful song, while the waves of the Atlantic Ocean thrust deeper and deeper into the Gulf of Morbihan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case it's not obvious from context, "ima" (אִמָא) is "mom" in Hebrew (pronounced ee-mah).
> 
> And as always, not that you would accuse us of making things up, but we did want to point out that Hadrian's Villa _was_ under Jesuit control in the 1660's (well into the 1800's in fact), and that the Vatican has an impressive collection of the Zeus/Ganymede romance in statuary form. We figured out why!


	5. Mnemosyne

**The Athonite Peninsula, Greece, winter 2017**

The six of us could have each had a complex of monasteries and not seen each other ever again, I mused as I walked through the empty rooms of golden icons and incense burners to collect my stepmother. Jesus and Mary could have one half of the peninsula, Hera and Aramis the other half, and I would have been happy in my hermit’s cave, for eventually I would have demolished the little stone hut with my bare hands until I could touch the ancient rocky walls.

But we were going to France, a prospect that did not fill me with as much joy and trepidation as might have been hoped. Still, I suppose it gave me some kind of a sense of purpose. Something to do with my hands.  I found a pack of cigarettes in a cell but they had been stale and mildewy at the same time.  If there was even still a France, perhaps I could just buy a fresh pack there.  It wasn’t like they would kill me. Maybe make me taste slightly more annoying to my mosquito friend. “My… Queen,” I addressed Hera with a leaden tongue. “It is time we depart.”

“Darling,” she turned around and extended her hands towards me, as Marie had done many times in the past.  What was I supposed to do, exactly?  Fall to my knees and cover them in kisses?  I approached cautiously and let her place her hands into my own.  “Must we really leave Greece?  I do not know that I have the strength to do so.”

“The doctor has declared you in perfect health, Madam,” I replied.

“He’s not really a doctor, Athos.  And in this case, Asklepios himself would not be able to assign a proper diagnosis.  Nothing is as it was anymore.”

I turned and offered her my arm.  “Madam, you are wrong on that account.  Aramis is a real doctor.  He has been to medical school and earned his degree.  Twice, in fact, during different stages of our lives.” Reluctantly, she followed me out of the Athonite chapel and into the sunlight.  “As for nothing being as it was, you’re right, of course.  Which is why I cannot in good consciousness leave you here unattended.”

“Your Father would be so proud of you,” she said, letting her head fall to my shoulder in a decidedly maternal gesture.

I frowned.  “My Father, I always got the distinct impression, vacillated between thinking me a grave disappointment and a gigantic nuisance. And you, Madam… I admit, I’m quite bewildered by the change I see in you.”

“You saved my life,” she said simply and squeezed my arm.  “You’re all I have left now.  You are all that is left of Olympus.”

“Ares is still out there,” I said with growing resentment.  That fucking asshole.  It was just like him to thank me for saving his life by leaving me alone with his mother, who had gone out of her way to hold a grudge against me for over three millennia.  Apparently until now.  “Somewhere.  Probably killing something.”

“It’s what he likes to do,” Hera concurred with a happy smile, as if the remembrance of her son’s greatest slaughters brought her deeply seated pleasure.  And it probably did. “He is very good at it.  So are you,” she added with another unsettling squeeze of my arm.

“Thanks?”

Passing along past the manger, I could hear the Virgin saying farewell to her son.  It would seem that Mary was unable to leave her Garden, for the faith of those who had built it would keep her earthly form bound to it. The irony of the situation of leaving my mountain in the care of the mother of Christ was not lost on me.

“You must take care of yourself, Yeshua,” her maternal lamentations carried to my ears.  “Let one of the other boys sacrifice themselves this time!  It doesn’t always have to be you!”

“Ima, please, I am a grown man!”

Thus distracted by the touching scene, we had arrived at the bus.  Grimley had already loaded up what useful provisions he could gather, and the luggage space underneath the seats echoed with the sounds of clucking chickens and a sheep or two, just in case.

I assisted Hera into the carriage of the repurposed tour bus and was about to ascend myself when a sight caught my eye.

“What the fuck is this?” I inquired of Yeshua’s choice of luggage.

“Judas is coming with us,” he responded as if letting a beast of burden into the carriage was a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

“You’re not bringing a fucking donkey onto the bus,” I said.

Christ bristled at that and began to gesticulate wildly as he spoke.  “Judas is not just some fucking donkey, good sir!  He’s a faithful friend who has been through a lot with me!”

I chuckled. “He’s an ass and so are you,” I said. “And if he’s as good a friend to you as his namesake was, that’s all the more reason to leave him behind.”

“We might need him,” Jesus pointed out.

“Donkeys are too gamey,” I retorted.

“Oh, you are so cynical, aren’t you!  Have you not learned in your entire long existence that love comes in unexpected forms and places?”

“If you feel that way about the donkey, I definitely don’t need to be seeing any of that on the bus,” I shook my head.  “And they said Zorba was bad!”

“Do you know what it says in Isaiah?” Yeshua went on.  “Like a shepherd He will tend His flock, in His arm He will gather the lambs and carry them in His bosom; He will gently lead the nursing ewes.”

“Why do you think I give a toss about this?”

“I’m taking the donkey!”

“Christ!”

“What!”

Not for the first time, I wished Kronos had eaten me.

“Cut that out,” I pointed a finger at him like a weapon.

“How do you think it makes _me_ feel when you take my name in vain?  Especially in bed?”

“I never…!  Hades’ balls, can you really hear when people do that?”

“If it’s a really powerful orgasm,” Christ shrugged.

“Fine,” I conceded because the entire discussion was giving me a nascent migraine.  “But he’s riding underneath, in the luggage compartment, with the chickens!”

“I wish you would not speak to the Lord like that,” Aramis whispered as he alighted past me up the stairs and onto the bus.  I noticed he had pilfered a new pair of sunglasses from somewhere.  The Athonite stock had truly weakened, it would seem.

“Still mad at you, flittermouse,” I grumbled and followed him up the stairs while Yeshua busied himself with filling our luggage compartment with hay for his “faithful friend.”

“He turned water into petrol so we could go look for your… Divus,” Aramis pointed out with a twitch in his lip.

“And I’m sure the fact that Marie lives in Vannes has nothing to do with the spring in your step,” I retorted.  It wasn’t that I wasn’t happy about the prospect… or at least the possibility of seeing our friend myself. But I wasn’t letting him off the hook that easily.  The hook, for the time being, was his home.  “Grimley!” I shouted out the window.  “I hope you don’t think I’m driving this unsightly behemoth myself!”

“Roadtrip!” Jesus beamed as he leapt into the cabin of the bus and pumped his fist in the air.

I prayed for Thanatos to take me.

 

***

You’ve heard of the children of the Sky and the Earth, but have you heard that they had brothers?  Kyklopes they were called, and they were three:  Argis, Vrontis, and Steropis.  Along with their brothers, the Titans, they had been banished by Ouranos into the very belly of the Earth.  But when Gaia helped her son Kronos destroy his father, Kronos did not stop there.  And he had locked his three Kyklopes brothers down in the lowest parts of Tartarus, so they may never be a challenge to his rule.

You ask how we won the First War?  It would have been forfeit without them.  It was Zeus who had gone down into Tartarus and he had freed Argis, Vrontis, and Steropis, whose names, as you well know, mean Brightness, Thunder, and Lightning.  It was they who had given the Olympians the power to defeat the Titans.  They had given Hades the helmet of invisibility, they had given Poseidon the trident, and they had given Zeus the power of the thunderbolt, from which they derived their names.  

Ever since that day, they had remained the Thunderous Father’s loyal ministers.  But when a day came that Zeus had used one of his thunderbolts to kill Apollo’s son Asklepios for daring to bring the mortals back to life, the God of Oracles raged and slew the Kyklopes who had armed his own Father so.  Zeus, who had never forgotten the loyal service of the three brothers, having punished Apollo for his transgression, had given them life again, and instilled them on the island of Sicily, where they had settled and became shepherds.

They only ate humans occasionally, sometimes when they got very hungry, and most of the time when the aforementioned mortals doubtlessly deserved it.

**Somewhere in the Balkans, winter 2017**

And there was evening and there was morning. Or maybe not. It had become impossible to tell, in this world that had reverted to the primordial stage before God had separated light from darkness. The earth was formless and void, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. He flapped his wings as he flew over a pond, swooped down and perched on my shoulder. “Coo?” spake the Holy Ghost.

“Oh fuck off,” I muttered. “I’m not feeling very pious right now.”

Offended, he flew off.

The sky shimmered like a puddle of petrol; it was day and it was night, eternal and unchanging, as Helios’ chariot hovered above the horizon motionless, abandoned by its driver who had descended to Earth. We could no longer see the comet that had menaced us from above the Mediterranean Sea like the Eye of Sauron.

Oceanus and his minions had ravaged Italy, and the Sun had scorched Hellenic soil. The Balkans had died a different death: humans had torn each other apart, and survivors had been mauled by the Old Ones who had left their shadows and had crawled out of their caves, from beneath the roots of trees, from within ancient legends. The moroi had come and brought plague with them, filling human settlements with the merry laughter of murdered children. Strigoi and dhampirs roamed the land thirsting for blood, crossing the Alps and spilling into regions where pockets of human life still existed under the protection of their northern gods. In the Balkans, humans were gone, devoured by the Old Ones; but unlike in Titan-ravaged Italy and Greece, the infrastructure had remained intact. The ancient demons had no interest in destroying roads and looting towns, and we drove north in great comfort.

I had left our camp and followed a path winding uphill and into the woods. “Good evening, Godmother,” I said without turning my head, for I had sensed the cold of a tomb fall in step with me. Her work here was done and, like us, she was moving north, swaying her scythe gently on every step she took. I had seen death in many guises, but it was this incarnation that had stuck with me: the old woman of Slavic lore with her skull and her scythe; the just, almost benevolent Death who took mortals under her wings. She was nothing to be afraid of, and I wasn’t. She had promised she’d never come for me, and Death would always keep her promise.

A rustle underfoot alerted me to an alien presence. My arm darted out and I pulled up a struggling kallikantzaros by the scruff of its neck. Its enormous cock bobbed up and down as the goblin spat and tried to kick me, but I held it at arm’s length. “Well, well, well, whom have we here? Why, it’s the spirit of Christmas!”

The kallikantzaros hissed and hurled abuse at me, but I ignored it. The howling of the vukodlak, which had been accompanying me ever since I’d strayed from the path, sounded much closer now. I didn’t have time to waste on the little nuisance.

“I realise that it’s your destiny to come up to the surface of the Earth to wreak havoc at Christmas,” I said, very calmly, while my fingers closed more and more tightly around the creature’s neck. “But I advise you to change your modus operandi this time and return to your other duty: go back underground. Don’t,” I held him close to my face and showed him my teeth, “let me catch any of you here again. There will be a reckoning.”

I dropped him, and he scurried back into the shadows, into the roots of trees where he belonged. The kallikantzaroi were sawing the world tree, and once the tree collapsed, it would take Gaia down. (I didn’t rule out that Gaia would take us down with her in turn, but I was willing to risk it. The situation could hardly become more dire than it was.)

Before me, the dryads parted, and there they were: a man with a green beard and shaggy hair and with no shadow; a woman with skin like tree bark and hair fused with twigs and leaves. I knew her of old, for she had lived in the tales of my childhood.

“Greetings, Muma Pădurii,” I bowed to her, pressing my hand to my heart. “I bless you with all my heart.” Then, I turned to the lesovik and held out a piece of bread to him. “As a token of my friendship. It’s unleavened,” I explained. “Our diet of late has been quite, um, Jewish.”

“You have the Son of Man with you, Simara,” said Muma Pădurii, while the lesovik sniffed the matza and nibbled it carefully.

“I do. He’s no danger to you.”

“It was his minions who’d cast us out and forced us to relinquish our place in creation.”

It was hard to argue with that. Christianity had declared the Old Ones demonic and banished them. “This is true,” I admitted. “But he never told them to. Trust me,” I smiled at the Mother of the Forest. “I have read the Gospels very thoroughly. Many times over, in many languages and Church-approved versions.”

“You served him,” the lesovik barked suddenly. “We know about you, Simara.”

“Served him?” I repeated lightly. “You don’t know me then to think so. I serve only myself.” And Discord, I added in the privacy of my mind.

Muma Pădurii’s ugly face twitched in something that I thought was supposed to be a smile. “You’ve come a long way, Simara. I remember you of old. I saw you when you were a boy growing up in a castle in the Wallachian forests.” Her smile deepened and her teeth flashed. “I took your sleep,” she said, almost gently. “And gave it to my children.”

I shivered. “It is your children whom I wish to protect,” I said. “The forests. The woodland creatures. The animals over whom you both watch.”

“Why should we believe you?” the lesovik said.

I raised my arm, and the Holy Ghost fluttered onto my wrist. “We have protected him,” I said. “We have also saved an owl who was as good as dead, a donkey who was lost in the wilderness, and we are keeping other creatures safe. As long as they travel with us,” I said, inclining my head in the direction where I’d left The Ark, “no harm will come to them.” Well, maybe to a chicken or two.

“Are you protecting them like you’ve protected us?” Muma Pădurii said. “You told us to go into hiding, last time you visited your native lands.” She cocked her head and spoke in a voice that was melodious and persuasive and that I recognised as mine. “ _This world is no longer yours. It belongs to humans now. To mortals. Go and hide, and I will protect you. Sleep. You will be woken when the time comes._ This is what you told us, Simara.”

“The time has come,” I replied. “You have been woken.”

“Not by you,” the lesovik said.

I smiled. “Do you think so?” I put my hand in my pocket and I pulled out a small box that I held under the lesovik’s nose. “Smell it,” I told him and watched him sniff the tuft of hair I’d taken from the aye-aye. “You can smell one of your kind, can you not? He is a native of Madagascar, an island thousands of miles from here, and I have helped him and his kin to rise and take back his realm. The humans who had subjugated his island are gone, and the lemurs are rulers once again.”

“How do I know that you haven’t killed him?”

“Come on, lesovik! You could tell if his blood clung to my hands.”

The lesovik gave the hairs another sniff and he and Muma Pădurii exchanged a look.

“We admire you, Simara,” the Mother of the Forest said at last. “The new world order hasn’t broken you. You have learned to live, to grow, to change. You have spilled the blood of humans, and it has saturated the earth. The sacrifices you made have kept those who dwell in the shadows alive. And,” she smiled again, displaying her sharp teeth. “I sat at your bedside so often when you were a boy, I feel almost like you were one of my own.”

“Thank you, Muma Pădurii,” I said, bowing again. That was how Athos must have felt when Hera discovered maternal feelings for him.

“What do you ask?” the lesovik said.

“Safe passage through your dominions. For me and my friends.”

He nodded. “Do not hurt the forest and its animals.”

“We won’t.” I thought of the sheep in the luggage compartment. Not technically forest animals.

“Seal the bargain, Simara.” The giant form of the woodland spirit loomed over me, his beard bristling and shedding matza crumbs.

I dropped my fangs and slashed across the palm of my hand. The two Watchers of the Forest followed a few drops with their gaze as they fell to the ground and seeped into the soil.

We parted. Dryads lumbered out of my way, clearing my path as I walked in their shadow. Like their forefathers in pagan times, they had drunk the blood of men, and their trunks were firm, their leaves glossy, their sap rich and fragrant. Knotholes watched me, branches brushed my hair and my coat, roots slithered like snakes under my feet. I left the woods behind and strolled towards bus, where I heard – gods help me – Grimley’s rendition of “I’d like to teach the world to sing” to the accompaniment of Jesus’ guitar.

“Well?” Athos emerged from the shadow and stood before me. He was wearing his human clothes, but I could always sense the shimmer of the Mantle of Discord around him these days.

“Why aren’t you by the fire, with the rest of them?”

He grimaced. “I’d rather not murder my Watcher with my bare hands. Nor your Lord, for that matter.”

“He’s doing it on purpose,” I said, indicating the Grigori.

“Olympian nuisance,” Athos said, and his lips twitched in an almost-smile that broke my heart.

“Athos,” I whispered. I was itching to touch him. What had happened to us?

“What, Aramis?” he whispered back. Even though he hadn’t moved, he suddenly appeared much closer.

I couldn’t speak. He was watching me with dark eyes and my fangs tingled with desire for his blood. For him.

A burst of laughter around the fire broke the spell. Athos blinked and I breathed again. “How did it go, chyortik?” he said, quite casually, shifting his gaze towards the line of trees behind me.

“Well enough.” I frowned. “I think I might’ve just been adopted.”

 

***

On the long seat in the very back of the tour bus, I sat with Hera’s head in my lap while she spoke to me of a time long before I remembered.

“I myself spent my early years in the belly of Kronos,” she was saying.  “Until your Father had tricked him into vomiting me and my brothers and sisters up.  He had always been a clever one, your Father.  You remind me of him more than I like to admit.  Komis Vrontis.” She had emitted a soft giggle at that and reached over her head to take my hand into hers.  “Professor Thunderson,” she smiled.

“I’m a not a little disturbed that you have studied my onomastics so closely, Madam,” I admitted.

“I have watched you for a long time,” she said, “and not without interest.”

“That is probably the understatement of the year,” I heard the Grigori mumble from a few seats ahead.  He was taking a break from driving after deciding, Gods forgive me, to let Jesus take the wheel.

“You really should get married,” Hera chided me again, drawing her nails over the scar around my ring finger.  “A man needs a wife.”

“Mmhmm,” I replied noncommittally.  

“Aramis would make a good wife,” she continued undeterred.  “He seems like he can keep a good house. And we know he can bake.”

“Madam, I beg you to desist,” I intoned, enjoying myself far too much for I knew very well Aramis could hear every word even at the front of the bus, where he had installed himself in close proximity to the Nazarene annoyance.  I would venture whatever was left of my divinity that at that very moment his fangs were tingling.

“Does he cheat on you?” the Goddess of Marriage whispered.

“We’re not exactly what one might call monogamous,” I replied, wrinkling my nose in consternation.

“And how is that working out for you?”

“We’ve had our ups and downs,” I provided.

“He seems to love you very much, even foolishly,” Hera mused, seeking out my eyes in the darkness of the bus.

“I wish you would tell me more about the First War,” I redirected.  “Perhaps about the weapons that the Cyclopes had given Father?”

“You know, darling,” Hera went on, idly playing with a single braid of her long hair, “I also did not wish to marry your Father when he had originally come wooing me.”

“But he was such a catch!” the Grigori chimed in from his seat of unhelpful voyeurism.

“He was a very determined God, however,” Hera continued.  “He knew how much I loved all animals and creatures of the earth and sky.  So, he had turned himself into a cuckoo bird outside my window and feigned being in great distress. He cooed and chirped the saddest birdsong to me, and my heart melted.  At last, I had brought the little bird into my rooms and cradled it to my bosom to give it succor.”

“Oh… balls,” I said succinctly, knowing exactly where this story was going.  It appeared that Hera had more in common with my real mother than I had ever considered.

“That’s when your Father transformed back into his true shape and…”  
  
“All right, I think I get the picture,” I interrupted, rubbing the bridge of my nose.  “Oh, my apologies, Madam.  If you need to finish the tale and get it off your chest, by all means.”

Hera laughed and hid her face in the folds of my shirt.  Her breath settled warmly against the skin of my stomach.  “Your brother Apollo had much the same appetites,” she continued fondly.  “Your brother Ares, why, he is a real romantic by comparison to those two!”

“Oh yes,” the Grigori cut in, “Ares is the most chivalrous of the Olympian rapists!”

“Can it, gnat,” I snarled.  “I’m sorry, stepmother, you were saying?”

Her hand trailed over my chest.  “Call me Hera,” she said.

Grimley cleared his throat and fixed me with a _look_ that required no interpreter.

I shifted in my seat and lifted her head gently from my lap.  “Why don’t I go see if Jesus needs a bio-break?” I offered.  “Forgive me, Madam, I’m afraid I’m not very good company these days.”  Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed the Grigori giving me a very emphatic thumbs up.

“You should talk to him,” Hera purred, stretching on the back seat like a luxurious lioness.  “He is _mad_ about you, your revenant.” Her face flexed into the cheshire cat’s grin.  “Quite mad.”

And I about him, I recalled, looking towards the front of the bus where my beloved still pretended to quietly read.  A broken sign up ahead told me that we were apparently leaving Serbia.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stay tuned for the next chapter which shall be posted in a few days, because we love you ♡


	6. Hyperion

_My dearest friends,_

_Would that I could embrace you into my arms (without crushing you to death).  My travels have taken me far from where I last dropped you off, but I suspect if you lie low long enough, we can see each other once more.  As you can see, this missive is carried by an Anemos.  I told him that should he blab of your location to anyone but myself, I would tear off his wings and shove them up his asshole, after I created an asshole for him into which to shove wings.  Being the Son of Helios has at last given me the clout I have always deserved, and the lower Titlings listen to me with appropriate respect and fear.  Therefore, be not afraid, but rejoice in my good fortune._

_Soon the human pestilence will be wiped off of Gaia’s beautiful face and a new world order can at last begin.  It is a good thing Aramis doesn’t technically need mortal blood to survive.  I’d hate to see him resort to drinking deer blood.  By the way, expect lots of deer in the near future!  Now that Artemis is dead, the only thing that will be hunting them will be natural apex predators, like wolves and such.  And speaking of wolves, I was thinking, Athos, that your brother’s children would have been most useful in helping us ferret out the extant humans, wherever they have burrowed.  But then I realized that it is for the best we cannot locate them because we would certainly eat them all._

_Was that insensitive?  Oh well.  You never actually loved your Da, did you? From what I’ve observed, parenting was never his strong suit.  I am certain that if you harbor a pang of sorrow in your tender heart, the love of your flittermouse will sustain you, as always._

_And Aramis, if you’re reading this:  ‘Sup!_

_Well, I must be off.  I hope you are staying low and not getting into any trouble what-so-ever._

_Yours faithfully,_

_Porthos_

**Lucerne, Switzerland, winter 2017**

From the peaks of Pilatus, the Mountain Mother Cybele had come thundering in her lion-drawn chariot. Sparks shot from under the wheels, setting the earth aflame and turning rocks and metal into molten lava. Even the gold stored in the Swiss vaults had melted and drowned its human keepers, and we saw more than one grisly, gilded statue poking its head from the soil as we entered the city of Lucerne.

None of us was in the mood to socialise that day. The Grigori led us to an abandoned spa resort, but rather than taking advantage of the luxurious beds and full fridges powered by emergency generators, we scattered to the four winds. My ramblings through the deserted town led me to the lake, where – not surprisingly perhaps – I spotted Jesus Christ sitting cross-legged at the jetty, staring intently at the tranquil waters. Judas, grazing at the shore, raised his nostrils at me and sniffed the air in an offensive manner. Even though I’d moved noiselessly, Jesus looked around and smiled at me.

“What do I call you?” he asked with his gentle smile when I sat down next to him. “’My son’?”

I had avoided a tête-à-tête with the Messiah during our stay on Mount Athos. In many ways, meeting him in person had been quite a disappointment. He looked like a hipster, filthy beard and all, and occasionally sounded like The Little Book Of Calm. And even though he was the Son of God and, to all intents and purposes, the founder of Christianity, and therefore technically my superior, I had been the General of the Jesuits and hot contender for the papal throne. In Church hierarchy, I felt that I outranked a journeyman carpenter.

“Call me Aramis,” I told him. “Athos does.”

“It is the name of the demon,” he said with the same gentle smile.

“Not technically; the demon’s name is Simara.”

“That’s very casuist reasoning. It is still you.”

“I am what I am,” I said. “I’m part of your Father’s creation.”

“I believe you are your own special creation, Aramis.”

“Are you… quoting Gloria Gaynor at me?”

“What?” He looked genuinely bemused.

“You weren’t on Earth in the 1970s, were you?”

“I haven’t been on Earth since my crucifixion.” He scratched his forearm nervously. “Why?”

“Oh, nothing. You were a bit of a 1970s fashion icon.”

“Was I really?” This time, Jesus sounded genuinely pleased. “That was a long time after I’d Ascended, wasn’t it?”

“About one thousand nine hundred and forty years after you’d Ascended.”

“Oh.” He bit on a strand of his untidy hair and looked rather sad. “That _is_ a long time.”

“I find it difficult to keep track of what year it is, too,” I said in a voice so hearty it made my fangs tingle in irritation. Talking to the God of my creed was surprisingly awkward. It had never been this way with Athos, not even when we were at our worst. Not to mention his family, who were just a bunch of country bumpkins with questionable manners and lifestyles and in whose presence I’d never been tongue-tied. Whereas Jesus made me feel like a sinner, and I did not like that one bit.

“You’ve been around on Earth for a long time, Aramis.” He turned his head and looked straight at me. “Do you think that was just?”

“As opposed to what?”

“As opposed to you dying when your time came.”

“I don’t want to be rude,” I said, finding to my surprise that I really didn’t want to be rude, “but isn’t that a bit rich coming from you?”

“It wasn’t my choice,” Jesus said calmly.

“Neither was it mine.” I said, with much more vehemence than the Messiah. “I died, and then I opened my eyes and got up and wandered the Earth aimlessly. For one hundred years, until I met Athos.”

“He saved you.”

“We saved each other.” I held Jesus’ gaze and added: “And we always will.”

“Pardon me,” said Jesus, “but from where I’m standing it doesn’t look like the two of you are particularly devoted to each other. He shuts you out and you walk away.”

“You don’t understand.”

He smiled. “Perhaps not. The reasoning of demons was always beyond me. But I see you, and I see him, and it doesn’t look to me as if either of you cared.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “We care. Don’t worry.”

Jesus shrugged. “All right. I won’t.” He dipped his fingers into the water of the lake, and a shoal of tiny fish swam up and started nibbling them.

“Perhaps I should go and talk to him…” I muttered. I saw Jesus’ mouth curve into a secret smile.

“Do you need my blessing?” He pulled his hand out of the water and raised two fingers.

I watched his hand shed tiny droplets for a moment or two. “I can’t make you out, Yeshua. You appear to be nothing but a bleeding-heart do-gooder, but sometimes… there’s a spark in you that I find intriguing. It’s almost like you had a sense of humour. Tell me: do you ever get angry?”

“Oh,” he said softly and plunged his hand back into the water. “If only you knew.”

“And yet you did what you did.”

“It was my destiny to become flesh and to die for your sins.”

“Was it worth it?”

Again, he looked straight at me, and those gentle, serious eyes were glowing with a strange light. “Do you want to know if I resent what I had to do, Aramis? When I look around me-” And he did, in an exaggerated gesture. “And see how humans desecrated the Paradise my Father had given them, I want nothing more than to hunt down survivors and _punch_ them in the _face_! But that would effect nothing, would it? And so, like a good shepherd, I have embarked on this pilgrimage with you on the off chance that some of my sheep are still alive and I can guide them through this vale of tears.”

“To the Promised Land?”

He smiled, quite composed again after the short burst of agitation. “To the Garden of Eden, yes.”

“Even if you happen to find survivors who aren’t Christians?”

“Even then.” He smiled again, and this time the quirk of his lips resembled a sly smirk more than anything else. “To be perfectly honest with you: I can’t really tell who’s Christian and who’s not. Humans are all the same, from where I’m standing.”

“I have a friend who said something very similar,” I said, remembering Porthos’ words. “Who would’ve thought that you and he have such fundamental opinions in common.”

“It’s not like anyone actually sticks to any of the things I told them,” Jesus continued. “Incidentally – the last thing my Father said to me before he left-”

“Yes?”

“He told me to command humans to get circumcised. He used his Metatron voice to get the point across. You’re not, are you?”

“What? No!”

“I didn’t think so, Catholics tend not to be. Even though my Father had been very explicit about it, several times over. It was important to him, you know, he was ready to kill infants over a bit of foreskin.”

For a moment, memories of the Holy Prepuce and its various owners and miraculous powers shot through my mind. If I recalled correctly, it had been the wedding ring of one of the more eccentric nuns whom the Catholic Church had managed to produce and who took her role as the bride of Christ very seriously. According to one highly dubious and mostly gibbered piece buried deep in the vaults of the Vatican, the Holy Prepuce had been used to fashion the rings of Saturn, but it would take a brave man to ask Kronos if that was true.

“Is that a deal breaker if you want to enter Paradise?”

Jesus was grinning openly. “It might be.” He reached out and patted my knee. “Don’t worry, _my son_. You are not one of the sheep. I’m very sure you can survive anywhere, you don’t need to be led to Paradise.”

My gaze fell on his exposed forearm, the brief flash of bluish veins as he turned his wrist.

Jesus saw me looking and went very still and serious. “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins,” he said.

“There aren’t many left whose sins you could forgive.”

“No,” he said sadly. He pulled himself up from his lotus position, knelt down facing me, and lifted his arm to my lips. “Drink from it.”

The throb of divine blood under paper-thin skin. With humans gone, with Athos remote, it had been a long time since I’d fed. My fangs dropped in spite of myself, and in the next moment, they were tearing the Lord’s tendons apart, drilling deep holes into his veins, and a hot stream of liquid blessing and light, such as I had never tasted before, gushed into my mouth, cleansing me of my sins. The blood of the new covenant. It was mine, at last.

 

 

 

***

The water tower of the Kapellbrücke reflected in the still waters of the Reuss.  The river itself appeared to be swarmed by swans, who had finally reclaimed the city in the absence of their human overlords.  Several of them stretched out their necks and screamed at me as I passed by with Sophia riding on my shoulder.  I walked past the old wooden bridge and the tower.  On any other day, its historical value as a former prison and torture chamber may have aroused me, but the hollowness that had become a part of me left no room for such frivolous thoughts.

“Porthos says ‘Sup!’” I informed my demon.

He stood facing one of the many fairy tale façades of Lucerne, ornately frescoed from the _bel étage_ up to the very weathervane.

“ _Amor medicabilis nullis herbis,_ ” he read the inscription aloud, without turning to face me.

“No remedy can cure love,” I let out a bitter gasp of a laugh.  

“No remedy can cure a broken heart,” he proposed.  “But I can see how you would not much care for that spin on it.”

“Let’s take a walk,” I suggested instead.  

We turned back towards the river, walking so close that I could feel the cold emanating from his body.  I should have taken him by the arm.  I wanted to.  But I did not.

The tower of the Kapellbrücke followed us like the one-eye of a Cyclops, even as we turned away from it. The abandoned storefronts and empty cafés stared at our shadows in mute horror.

“What else does Porthos say?” he asked, quietly.

“To expect many deer,” I replied.  “To lie low,” I added.

“Deer,” he repeated and licked his teeth.  “Very well.  So he is still our friend, then?”

My steps turned towards the Spreuerbrücke, and I gestured towards the seventeenth century paintings over our heads.  “I thought you would enjoy this one,” I said.  “It is the _Totentanz_ cycle.  Most of these are original.”  Merry skeletons beamed down at us as Death summoned all comers to their final dance and we walked along the old floorboards of the bridge. A pair of swans glared in suspicion as they swam past.  

“You did not answer my question,” Aramis sighed, less than overjoyed to be surrounded by Death, at least not in the Renaissance form.  

“Is Porthos our friend,” I repeated.  Over my head, a valiant knight was about to meet his Maker.  “I think the real question, Aramis, is - are you?”

He twirled away from me.  Had he been wearing a cape, it would’ve swirled around him in a plume of visceral rage.

“How dare you ask me that?”

“Well, I honestly don’t know anymore, Aramis,” I stated through my overbearing exhaustion.  “You hate humans, you love humans.  You hate lower demons, you love lower demons.  You love humans, yet you want to bring back the very demons who had hunted them for centuries.  And, at the end of the day, you have never been a fan of Olympus, or any member of my family, or for that matter _Antinous_ , and yet here we are!  You tell me what I’m supposed to think!”

The _Totentanz_ was behind us, and we were walking on the opposite bank of the Reuss.  I had to admit, despite the ominous emptiness of post-apocalyptic streets, Lucerne did not have any bad angles.

“It is very fine of you to crawl out of your deep, dark hole just to throw accusations at me,” Aramis snarled and continued to walk several steps ahead of me, his hands clasped behind his back.  “You act as if I’m some unknown entity that you cannot trust.”

“What am I supposed to think when you disappear for hours and I have no idea what you’re plotting and with whom?”

“Truly, you are the biggest hypocrite alive,” he hissed at me through clenched teeth and narrowed eyes.  Sophia fluttered off of my shoulder in a blatant display of disapproval.  “I’m supposed to tolerate it each time you lock yourself up in a cave for want of knowing how to deal with your emotions, but I’m not allowed to go for a piss in the woods without arousing your suspicion?”

“Is this going to be Paris all over again, you tell me!” I accused him.  “Constantly in some cabal with Marie?  When you could not make up your mind between being a musketeer and a priest?  Only there’s a bit more at stake now, isn’t there?”

“How can you doubt me!” Aramis exploded.  His nostrils flared and, for a moment, I could have sworn his nails had turned into talons, but when I looked again, they were as delicately groomed as ever before.  “Do six centuries of love and devotion really mean nothing to you?”

“Love is dead,” the hollowness inside me responded.

“Don’t..,” his hand was extended towards me almost in a curse or a supplication.  I could not tell whether he wanted to attract or repel me.  “Don’t you dare say that.  I won’t go back there.   _I won’t_!”

Before I had the chance to ask him where, he had turned right and slipped through the unlocked gate of a church.  I looked up at the inscription over the gateway.  “Jesuits!” I laughed.  “Of course.”

I found him looking with blind eyes at the altar displaying the vestments of St. Klaus, who, from what I recall hearing of him, was even more antisocial than I had been during my days at the Abbott on Mount Athos.

“Come away from this place,” I whispered, placing a hand gently over his shoulder.  “You know, it’s full of fake marble.  It’s… it’s farble, Aramis.”  His shoulders shook and, “I made you laugh,” his body turned and collapsed against mine.  I wrapped my arms around him and pressed my lips to his hairline.  “I wish I could explain to you how I feel, but I just… I am eaten up by a void.  I feel like I know nothing.  And I trust nothing.”  He moved against my breast, pushing away so he could look into my eyes.  “Can you really still love me if Love is dead?” I asked.

“You are right,” he said, his eyes traveling over my face and falling to my chest.  “The world is upside down.  And the truth is, I’m not even sure what it is that I want right now.  But I do know one thing, beyond the shadow of any doubt:  I want _you_.  Always.”

I softly brushed a curl of his hair out of his eyes and tucked it behind his ear.  “I want you, too,” I whispered.

“And, Athos,” he went on in a trembling voice, “if what you’re telling me is that you cannot love me right now because _Love is dead_ , then… then you might as well cut off my head and toss my body into the Reuss.  I’m sure the nymphs will have a feast of it.”

I opened my mouth to speak when the sound of beating wings over our heads startled us both.  The owl had made a wild dash towards the back of the chapel and was attempting to storm the vestry.

“Sophia, for fuck’s sakes…” I grumbled.  “I’m sorry,” I turned to Aramis.  “Just let me get her.”

We followed the owl’s desperate hoots until the vestry door, then passed through it as Sophia dashed on madly towards a stairway leading below.

“Where are you going, you crazy fowl?” I grumbled.

“Hoot hoot!” Sophia replied.

“We’re following an owl,” Aramis pointed out.  “I feel that we have crossed the Rubicon of ridiculousness.”

“We came here in a bus driven by Jesus Christ,” I pointed out.

“That’s valid,” Aramis conceded and followed me into the belly of the beast that was the Jesuit Church of Lucerne.

At last, Sophia perched calmly over a doorway and gave me a look that made me feel incredibly judged.  Perhaps Athena had not been dead at all, but had taken residence inside her little brown owl.

“She wants us to go in there,” Aramis pointed at the door.  I shrugged and kicked it down. It wasn’t as if the Church’s owners were likely to be back anytime soon, and as far as I was concerned, Aramis was still the General.

“Ah, your owl friend found the baths,” Aramis smiled, leaning against the remains of the doorframe.

“Goddess of Wisdom, indeed,” I mused and pointed grandly towards the space inside.  “ _Après vous, Monsieur_.”

 

 

 

***

A layman might’ve been surprised to find communal baths at the end of the maze of corridors beneath a Renaissance church, but I’d been a Jesuit long enough to know better. The room was as spacious and as well-appointed as one might expect from the Society of Jesus, who never denied themselves anything. I imagined that the good paters encouraged altar boys to take a shower after Mass – under adult supervision naturally, as to prevent any undesirable goings-on.

Across from the showers hung the obligatory IHS emblem. Sophia found herself a nice hook on the wall, fluffed up her plumage and stuck her head under her wing. Athos was looking around, his eyebrows raised, and then he strode to a shower and turned on the tap with a decisive, manly air. “I wonder if these still work,” he muttered. A torrent of water gushed out, soaked his sleeve, and splashed all over the front of his coat.

“You better take off these wet clothes,” I suggested.

He whirled around and faced me. “You think so?”

“Yes.” I held his gaze. “I do.”

Athos began to strip. Without breaking eye contact, he shrugged off his coat, unbuttoned his shirt, undid the cufflinks, and unzipped his slacks.

“Stop,” I said in a low voice, just as he began to push his trousers down. He stopped, fingers clasping the waistband, still looking at me with dark, luminous eyes. His shirt collar lay untidily around his neck, his naked chest rose with shallow breaths, and when I followed the line of hairs down to his groin, my mouth went dry.

My paralysed body unfroze, and I moved towards him, listening to the sound of my own steps over the sound of rushing water. I didn’t stop until I was so close to him that I could feel the warmth of his skin, even through my own clothes. I wrapped my fingers around his wrists and tugged him gently closer. “Don’t doubt me, Athos,” I said over the sound of my blood and his pounding in our veins. “Not in this. Never in this. Do you think Aphrodite was the only Goddess of Love? Every culture on Earth has one. We’ll find a land where the old gods are not vanquished, if that’s what it takes, if that’s what you need to believe in me, in us. And if they are all gone, we’ll make our own. How difficult can it be to create a god? Humans have been doing it for millennia.”

“Aramis-”

I kissed him then. Kissed that beautiful mouth that parted under the pressure of my lips, breathed in the familiar tang of him, until a tremor run through his whole body, a spark of electricity that set something deep inside me aflame.

“You love me, Athos,” I gasped, kissing him with open-mouthed abandon. “Don’t ever forget that. You love me as deeply as I love you.”

“Everything is lost,” he all but sobbed, clinging to my hips with both hands.

“Not everything. I’m still here.” I nipped at his bottom lip with my teeth to drive my point home. “Your Grigori is still here, gods help us.”

That elicited a strangled laugh, as I knew it would.

“We will persevere, Athos.”

The grip around my hips tightened, and I knew I’d be bruised and sore afterwards. For now, I shoved my hand between our bodies and into the gap where his slacks had fallen open; where his cock swelled for me, hard and huge, and I rubbed it through the fabric of his briefs, dragging my nails along the length until he hissed and grabbed my arse, pulling me in.

“Take off your clothes, Aramis!” he growled filthily into my ear. “I want to see your dick against mine.”

I showed him what he wanted to see. Naked, our clothes discarded on the floor, we stood face to face, and I slid my cock against his in long, slow strokes. His hand splayed over my back, steadying me as my body flexed backwards and we watched ourselves frot against each other. His other hand was cradling my balls, rolling them gently, fingers dipping into the crevice between my thighs, and then I licked across the palm of my hand and wrapped it around our hard-ons, thrusting hard until Athos groaned and dug his teeth into my shoulder.

“Come,” he commanded in a husky whisper. “Here. Like that.” He tugged me under the stream of water and we both groaned. My hand snaked underneath his cock, between his legs, and I thrust two fingers up him, fucking him with thorough, methodical thrusts, deep and relentless, even as his knees buckled and his mouth spat out a stream of profanities. “Harder!” he snarled, yanking at my hair. “Make me come, damn you!”

“Not yet.” I bit his lip, to bruise, but not to break the skin. “I need you to _feel_ it.”

“I am feeling it.”

“To feel that love is not dead.”

“Aramis.” He thrust his hips, impaling himself on my fingers. “I love you. I missed you.”

“I’m here now.” My mouth had slid down his neck, I rubbed my cheek against his soft beard and finally, finally permitted my fangs to extend. Dragging a tip delicately over his wet skin, I twisted my hand, teasing him with my curled fingers. Athos’ head fell back against the tiles, mouth open, gasping in beautiful abandon.

“You beautiful demon,” he breathed. “You kill me and you bring me back to life.”

“Always.” I licked the side of his neck, where his carotid artery throbbed for me. “Forever. Till the end of time.”

“This is the end of time.”

“I’m still here.” I grazed his skin with my fangs and he squeezed my arse, pulling my legs apart, and screwed a finger inside me. “And so are you, Athos. We’re still standing.”

An explosion of lust erupted in my groin. Plastered against each other, our chests glued together, we finger-fucked each other, rutting against each other, panting, as pain and anger and sorrow got flushed away. One hand tangled in a fistful of my hair, Athos jerked my head back. His hot mouth devoured mine, his teeth in my lips, his tongue in my mouth. He cut himself on my fangs and drops of Olympian blood soaked into my tongue and into my bloodstream. All of a sudden, he released me and stared at me, wild-eyed, as my own head reeled with lust and love.

“Da pe maorte,” Athos whispered. _Give unto death_. His gaze locked with mine, he turned his head slowly, baring his neck to me, pulling me in even closer as another finger buried itself in my arse. I opened my mouth and lunged, teeth tearing through his skin and flesh with ease. Olympian ichor burst forth and flooded my senses. Once again, I was blinded by the light as I drank from my God, helpless and greedy as I had been the very first time when I came to him in the dead of night. We dropped to the floor, I knew not how and when, sliding and shoving against each other. His cock between my thighs, my cock between his. He thrust inside me, pinning me to the ground, as his blood continued to pour into my throat. There was one brief moment of complete stillness, complete bliss, and then we moved again, fucking like feral beasts. He tore me apart and filled me out with his dick, deeper and deeper, claiming me as his with each glorious thrust. His arm lay firm and unrelenting around me, and as he rolled us over, his cock slipped out of me. Athos growled, his spilled hair, the growing pool of blood were an unholy halo around his head, and I worshipped at the altar of Discord by slamming my fangs into his neck again. His hips jolted, I shoved his legs apart with my knee and plunged my dick up his arse.

“Take me, Aramis!” Athos’ fingers dug into my hips again and he ground up against me. “Fuck me, harder!”

I groaned, struggling to free myself from his grip, rutting against him with short desperate shoves. “Lift your leg,” I panted, kissing him with blood-stained lips. The iron-hard thighs around me relaxed and I hooked one of his knees over my shoulder, opening him to my thrusts. My cock hurt from the effort of holding back. “Come for me.” I licked across the wound of his neck. “I love you.”

Another blinding flash exploded behind my eyelids. For a moment, the inside of my skull was ablaze with a roaring fire. There was nothing there but heat and light, and beneath me, Athos’ entire body jerked off the tiles, sending me flying across the wet floor. I grabbed his wrist, clinging to him with fingers like claws, as he rolled over and struggled to his hands and knees.

I closed my eyes for a moment, opened them again, and saw him on all fours. His cock was still hard, but he had come and the evidence of his orgasm dripped to the floor in gooey drops. As I pulled myself up, I saw that the inside of his thigh was sticky where my spunk had dribbled out and down. I trailed my hand over the shuddering muscle, shoved my thumb into the trembling hole. His glorious body was irresistible in that pose, and as my cock had not gone soft yet, I pushed it inside him again, collapsing on top of him. “You’ll be the death of me, Discord,” I muttered into the soft wet skin of his shoulder blade.

He murmured something. I felt the vibrations through his ribcage.

“What?” I said and slid off him as he moved and rose to his knees.

“Aramis,” he spoke in a calm, lucid voice that sent a tremor of trepidation through me. “Why are there two of you?”

I looked round. A human figure shimmered behind the steam that filled the room, as if it had been born from water vapours. It looked eerily familiar, and I reached out and seized Athos’ hand.

“Why are there two of _you_?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Chanukah, Audience! Have a special gift. Only six chapters and 32,500 words in, and they DID IT!


	7. Leto

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is for Favourite_alias to ease her current suffering from an evil ailment, which she endures with the greatest patience and forbearance, like chyortik.

_Love is dead_ , he’d said, and light was extinguished where she lay curled around his heart.  Her arms were so small, they barely reached around his ventricle.  Inside the four chambers, his blood pumped against the walls in a Herculean effort.  It was the blood of a warrior and it boiled within his veins.  Her arms slipped and she dropped, passing easily through the lining of his gut and curling up in a ball in a puddle of bile.

 _I’m right here!_ she shouted. _Can you not feel me inside you?_

So small, and powerless too, as she attempted to push her way up his esophagus, only to be flushed down by a sudden flood of wine.

 _Let me out!_ she tried shouting, but the current of wine carried her down a seemingly endless slide.  She twirled around in a dark whirlpool, tossed by the currents of misery.  Soon enough, she had been drunk too, and lulled into a quiet sleep as she drifted up and down the channels of his body.   _Let me out_ , she muttered through unruly, numb lips.

At last, she had allowed herself to slumber.  What use was it to swim against the current?  Eventually, he would hear her again.

“Do you think Aphrodite was the only Goddess of Love? Every culture on Earth has one.”

A soft kick.  They’d been talking about her.  She stirred, listening intently.   _Please help_ , she muttered, wading her way through the viscera.   _Please hear me!_

“You love me, Athos,” an earnest supplication washed over her ears. “Don’t ever forget that. You love me as deeply as I love you.”

_Yes, yes, fucking finally!_

Her hands grew bigger, stronger, she leapt forth, scattering connective tissue out of her way.  His heart, a warrior’s heart, it was beating for her again.  She slammed against its wall, bounced happily past the hiatal valve, swam upstream into his esophagus.  Out, out, towards the light!

“Come for me. I love you.”

_I’m coming! I’m coming!_

She tumbled forth in a light mist, mingling with the drops of water around her, dazed from confusion and dull from the ache that still held her in its grasp.

“Why are there two of you?”

“Why are there two of _you_?”

“I’m here!” Aphrodite choked out as she struggled to catch her breath, dropping to the wet tiles and letting her powers gather enough to take on her corporeal form. “Hera’s tits, I’m finally here!”

**Lucerne, Switzerland, winter 2017**

Athena’s owl and the Holy Ghost appeared to be engaged in some kind of an avian debate outside the room where we had installed my regurgitated sister.  The Holy Pigeon, in particular, puffed out his chest and bristled his tail feathers in a militant way, while Sophia calmly shook her head and then bent over presenting her cloaca in a way that struck me as more rude than inviting.

“What the fuck are you two going on about?” I asked.  “Get out of here and let Aphrodite sleep!”

The owl stared at me with narrowed eyes and a snarl of disappointment.  “What?” I asked her.  “What do you want me to do?”  She hopped onto my shoulder and gently butted her head into mine.  “Is she in trouble?  Do you want me to go check on her? Oh, I wish you would just _speak_!” I sighed in exasperation.

The Holy Ghost once again floated out the window, but not before leaving a volley of pigeon shit behind on the floorboards.

“I hate that thing,” I pronounced with a shudder.  Sophia pulled on my hair with her curved beak.  “All right, all right, you cruel mistress, I’ll check on her!”

I gave a quiet knock upon the door, listening intently for any response, when a loud moan greeted me from inside Aphrodite’s  chambers.  I burst through the door, my handgun cocked and pointed in front of me.

“Get away from her!” I shouted before I had the chance to take the entire scene in.  Oh, but then I did.

Aphrodite, my dear sister, was on her back, her beautiful head thrown off the mattress, golden hair spilling like a waterfall all the way down to the floor, while in between her spread, naked thighs the body of Ares thrust with Olympic abandon.  He lifted his head off of her breast at my arrival and grinned at me with all his canines.

“Little brother,” he said, his hips still pistoning in and out of the Goddess of Love, as if propelled by sheer habit alone.  “You can put that down, it won’t do you any good.”

Aphrodite giggled and stretched one alabaster arm towards me.  “You should join us instead,” she purred.  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Ares?”

“I don’t know where to start with the two of you,” I confessed, lowering my weapon.  In fairness, I was extremely thankful she did not choose this moment to appear to me as Aramis.

“Either join us or sit down and let us finish,” Ares pointed out, lowering his head again and catching Aphrodite’s mouth with his own.  She clenched her thighs around him, rolling them both until she rose up astride his lap, still laughing and riding him like a demented mare.  “So close,” she moaned, “almost there!”

“Fuck!” I cursed and turned to leave the room when the door was slammed in my face by an invisible power.

“Stay,” Ares’ voice commanded.  “I would have words.”

“You’re the last asshole in the universe I want to speak to right now,” I replied, my back still turned against the sounds of their slapping bodies and banshee-like squealing.

“Make me come, you dirty dog!” my sister screamed and I scrunched up my face in agony.  “Oh, yes, yes, _yes_!”  The sounds of both of them moaning out their completion and then falling prone onto the mattress told me all I needed to know.

“You must be so glad you’re a widow now,” I sniped over my shoulder.

“Not that it ever stopped us before,” Ares mused with an audible smirk.  I took a glimpse behind me to behold him lax-limbed and sated with an expression of post-coital benevolence glued to his annoyingly handsome face.

“How did you know she was back?” I inquired.

“I could sense her,” Ares responded, letting his hand caress Aphrodite’s naked flank with a look of indolent fondness.  “I can always sense her.  I could never stay away from her for long.”

“I’m so very happy for you,” I intoned with a look of utter boredom.  “And are you here to fight or just fuck?”

“Maybe a little of both,” he answered, stretching out his long limbs.  His cock, I was not surprised to see, was still hard.  “Why don’t you come to bed, so I can thank you properly for saving both our lives?”

“I threw her up, you know,” I recounted, “there is something inherently off putting about that.  I think I’ll pass on the gratitude if it’s all the same to you.”

“He was the one man I had known whose love had ever been the truest and the most lasting,” Aphrodite mewled, her head on Ares’ shoulder, her hand caressing his damp, matted chest hair.  “I had taken refuge inside him, knowing his heart would keep me safe.  But it took him much longer than I figured to finally make love with his demon, and without the rekindling of their love, I was too weak to return.”

“Did I mention that I threw her up?”

“Poor brother,” Ares chuckled.  “I guess you are Love’s bitch after all.  And I had such hopes for you.”

“I have half a mind to hand you over to the Titans,” I growled.

“You wouldn’t!” Aphrodite squealed, throwing her body over our brother’s.

“Don’t test me,” I snapped.

“You silly boys,” the Goddess of Love beamed at us both.  “You must not squabble and fight, even though it’s in your nature, Discord and War.” I turned away and demonstratively directed my eyes out the window.  The Holy Ghost was blowing a raspberry at me from a cloud.  “But I know you love each other, as is right, for we are all family and we are all the family we each have left.”

“I’m not fucking him,” I stated firmly.

“Maybe not today,” Ares pinned me with his wolfish grin.  “Maybe not tomorrow.  But before this war is over, I will hold you in my arms again and make you call my name.”

I fixed a long look upon him, imagining Aramis draining him of all his essence, if only temporarily.  “Your mother is right,” I finally said.  “You really _are_ the romantic of the family!”

 

 

***

I lay in our shared bed, eyes open but sightless as I stared up into the darkness.  Aramis lay pressed into my side, arms and legs wrapped around me like a warm cocoon, breath tickling my neck.  His head knocked into mine and he emitted a pathetic whine.

“What’s the matter, flitterbabe?”

He chuckled and grazed my earlobe with his teeth.  “You’re not sleeping,” he whispered.

“No.  You?”

“You’re not sleeping,” he repeated, louder and with a put-upon tone.

“Sorry,” I muttered, twining my fingers through his hair.  “Do you want to talk about it?”

He shifted and his arms flexed protectively around me.  “Your hick family!”  I laughed somewhat mirthlessly.  “You gave birth to your sister by parthenogenesis and then your mutt brother materialized inside her.  This is quite a bit to take in, even for them. I am surprised you are taking this so in stride.”

“It was not technically parthenogenesis,” I said, tilting his face upwards, “and he didn’t exactly materialize…” I chose to kiss his lips rather than finish the ludicrous sentence.  “I’m certain things will make more sense in the morning,” I stated.

“I’m not,” he said, pressing his lips to my temple. “Forgive me if thoughts of the two of them possibly reconstituting your race do not fill me with sunshine and rainbows.”

“We… made… Love, Aramis,” I made a half-hearted attempt at humor.

“You just did the opposite of making me feel better.”

I leaned in to kiss him again, letting my tongue linger over the curve of his lips.  “At least you’re here,” I whispered, closing my eyes. _At least you’re still mine,_  I thought. “Thank you.” _Thank you._

Eventually, I slept, but my dreams were troubled and formless, like an endless gallop through the night on a horse that I had no control over.

The next morning, Grimley informed me that the Queen awaited me in her chambers.  “Her Olympic Majesty was feeling peckish and I had roasted her a swan,” he bragged.

“Have you seen any doves around, Grigori?” I wondered taking a biscuit off his extended tray.  It was heart-shaped and pink and I graced his obsequious physiognomy with a condescending look. That was a bit servile and on-the-nose, as far as I was concerned.

“Do you mean the Holy Ghost, Kyrios?”

“Doves, you ass.  The clean, monogamous fowl? The fucking birds who bring ambrosia to Olympus?”

“Do you think Her Majesty would like to eat one?”

“Are you being purposefully obtuse, gnat?”

“I’ll keep a dove log for you from now on, Kyrios,” he bowed with an impertinent smirk and arranged the heart-shaped biscuits on the tray in a jaunty swirl.

I found Hera presiding over a repast with Aphrodite and Ares, luckily no longer _in media res,_  looking more glum than I would have expected under the circumstances.

“You wanted to see me, stepmother?”

She rose from the chair, unfurling to her full regal height, and coming over to envelop me in a warm embrace.  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Ares enjoying himself tremendously.

“I thought the four of us should speak. Hold family council, as it were.”

“Is this how you treat family?” I turned towards the other two.  “By running off, abandoning your mother? I never thought you one to run from a fight, Ares.”

My brother remained outwardly unmoved.  “We’re at _war,_  Athos,” he stated with a sweeping gesture of his arm, as if the roasted swan and crumpets somehow explained everything. “Surely you, of all people, should understand the disadvantage of us all staying together.  We are hunted.  If one of us is discovered, all of us will be in peril.  Sitting ducks.” He punctuated the latter by throwing his knife into the swan’s carcass.  “It was much safer for us to split up.”

“We are no longer at war,” I shot back.  “The war was lost.  Olympus has been vanquished.”

“Not indefinitely,” Hera spoke, her hand resting gently upon my shoulder.  “I too was eaten once by Kronos.  Sprung in a weakened state from his gullet by your Father, only to be plunged into a ten year war.  And yet, we persevered.  We took back what was rightfully ours.”

“History is written by the winners, Madam,” I reminded her.  “The Titans too have now reclaimed what was rightfully theirs.”

“We can take it back,” Ares stated with determination.  “It took our forefathers ten years and some powerful allies in the end, but it could be done.  Besides, you have already shown us all their weakness:  they can be divided, Discord.  If they can be divided, they can be ruled.”

“Divide and conquer,” I muttered, avoiding his eyes.

“If you want to kill the snake, why not cut off its head?” Aphrodite suggested, nibbling on a swan bone with delicate bites.  “It is what they did to us.  They took our King, let us take theirs.”

“Without Kronos, the primordial ones cannot rule,” Hera said pensively, resuming her seat at the head of the table.  “They would either turn on each other, or likelier get bored and lay down to slumber again.”

“How do we kill Kronos?” I asked, admittedly intrigued.

Hera looked lost in thought as she sipped her tea from a delicate china cup left behind by our unintentional Swiss hosts.  “Let me think upon it.  I might know someone who can help.”

“Well, you have a nice long think, but we’re continuing onwards to France,” I said.  “You two,” I addressed Aphrodite and Ares, “can either come along or fend for yourselves as you see fit.  You have my word that Hera will be well provided for.”

“What’s in France?” Aphrodite asked with a sly grin.

“We’re going to resurrect that boy that Athos once gifted to the handsome Emperor of Rome,” Hera explained, gracing me with a loving look that was no less disturbing for being a common occurrence of late.

“Ooh, how romantic!” Aphrodite clapped her hands in glee.  “The pretty one with the perky nipples, you mean?”

“All my lovers were pretty,” I retorted peevishly.

“Ha!” Ares barked out.  “I know the boy you mean!  The Bithynian youth that Father had his eagle-eye on!  Athos made that underhanded deal with the Egyptians and _stole_ him from under our noses.”

“Athos is such a clever boy,” Hera stated with maternal pride.  “You really were so brilliant, Ares, to suggest that I curse him with immortality instead of killing him.”

The words fell from her lips so lightly, trickling into a sentence.  All the synapses in my brain were firing in an attempt to connect her words in such a way that I could at last understand what she had been saying. Then, the puzzle pieces locked into place. All blood rushed from my face and extremities, flooding back into my heart with such force I thought it would burst like burning lava from my chest.

“What…”

Ares too had blanched like a ghost.  I had never seen a look of true terror on his face before, not even when he was facing certain death during the last battle on Olympus.

“It sounds worse than it is,” he stammered, eyeing me with pleading eyes.

“Get out…” I mouthed, unable to find my voice.

“Now, Athos…” Hera attempted to intercede.

“ _Get out_!” I shouted.  “Get out of my fucking sight!” I extended my hand towards him and lightning shot from my fingers, splitting the chair where he’d been sitting in half.  

Both Ares and Aphrodite were gone.  Smoke rose from the charred remains of the destroyed chair just as steam rose from the refilled cup of Hera’s tea.  She still sat in her seat, calmly looking at me with her ancient eyes.

“You’ve been a full god for how many years now, my darling?” she mused, taking another small sip.  “And you still have not learned to control your powers?”

Rage, all consuming rage burned through me, like the River Phlegethon.  I cast my eyes down upon my hand that still shimmered with electricity.

“He was the reason you found me and Eris together, wasn’t he?” I asked.  

“Eris is dead, darling.  You killed her,” she replied, unmoved.  “There is no use crying over spilled milk.  Now, let us speak of the present.  Do you know how to control your powers?”

Like the mute mask of Tragedy, distorted and open-mouthed, I quietly shook my head.

“That’s all right, my sweet boy,” she smiled, placing her cup back onto the dainty saucer.  “I will teach you.”

**Swiss Alps, winter 2017**

Athos was brooding again. He had spent two days locked up with the wicked stepmother in one of our hotel’s honeymoon suites, from where rolls of thunder and the stench of burning bedclothes reached our ears and noses in shorter and shorter intervals. Apparently, Hera was teaching him her husband’s tricks. Goddess or not - if he ever turned into wildlife to solicit an illicit fuck, I’d rip out her throat and watch her ichor soak Gaia’s fecund arse. It didn’t help that, at a particularly loud blast of thunder and lightning, Grimley caught my eye and mouthed ‘Hera’s cunt!’

His godhood training must have left him exhausted, because as we were leaving Lucerne for France, Athos slumped into the backseat of the bus and stared moodily out of the window. His face was pale and drained. Hera, tall, regal and disdainful, smirked when she saw me looking. She was, I realised, the first powerful woman with whom I did not get on. Athos might have made his peace with her, but I couldn’t forget the pain and anguish she’d put him through in the first six centuries that I’d known him. My fangs tingled whenever I caught a whiff of her faintly ambrosian scent. But since that heady, dizzying experience in the Jesuits’ bathroom when, as Athos put it, we had _made love_ , I was determined not to do or say anything that would drive us apart again. Athos was coming into his divine legacy, it seemed, and it would be unwise to stand in his way. The taste of divine blood in my mouth, the throb of divine blood in my veins had calmed me, for now.

Rather than giving in to the provocation, I glued my eyes to the pages of the Discworld novel that the Messiah had lent me. Reading about Brutha in the wilderness had a certain poetic irony to it, as we drove through the apocalyptic landscape. And I couldn’t deny that the Holy Ghost had quite a bit in common with the Great God Om.

Suddenly, I raised my head and looked out of the window. A few heartbeats later, everyone else turned their heads too, staring intently at the deserted mountain road. We had avoided tunnels, for, as Grimley had pointed out, all it’d take was for Gaia to sneeze and our crushed bones would end up in Tartarus. “I don’t care if we fancy ourselves immortal, lady and gentlemen,” he said. “We still have bodies, and they can get hurt.” Jesus nodded in agreement, massaging his palm jerkily with his other hand.

Outside the window, a noise rose, an ancient, dark noise, one that stalked human nightmares with the sound of wyvern wings and the laughter of maenads. Unseen at first, perceptible only in cloudy shapes, in the roar and howl of the winds. And then we saw it: _Wilde Jagd,_  the Wild Hunt in hot pursuit, majestic and cruel like the eagle that swoops down on its prey to slash it open with cleaver-like talons.

A giant eagle owl tore through the air, trailing its demonic entourage in its wake. The bird’s feathers were speckled with the burgundy red of fresh arterial blood, and I wondered momentarily where that had come from and whether I could drink from its source. On its back rode a woman: a glorious creature with Medusa’s hair and the eyes of a lynx, her white gown sullied with red-brown stains. She wielded a hatchet of iron, and as her airborne steed shot past us, both woman and owl shot a quick glance into our bus.

Sophia hooted in indignation.

“Was that,” Athos said in a faraway voice, “Marion?”

“She’s Bertha,” I said, stroking my lower lip with the tip of my finger. “Perchta, the bright one. The leader of the Wild Hunt, beautiful and white as snow. She slits humans open with her hatchet and throws their bodies into the river.”

“Hah! I bet Marie likes _that_.”

“That’s probably how they got together in the first place.”

A _wiedergänger_ lurched past our bus, trying desperately to keep up with the hunters. I grimaced, for the sight and smell of the primitive undead offended me. Billowing around him, the folds of my Godmother’s cloak enveloped him as he struggled up the mountain road. As she moved past, Death turned her head and for a moment I saw her pale skull gleam beneath her hood.

“What’s Marion doing here?” Athos was still frowning out of the window. He was surprisingly slow on the uptake. For a moment, I worried that full godhood meant that his mental capacities would regress. Gods were not known for their cognitive agility.

“The Wild Hunt, Athos?” I sat down next to him and took his hand. “Chasse hennequine, remember? Chéserquine, as it is known in Normandy. It originated there and spread across Europe, and it looks like it’s very much Marion’s project.”

“You’re not surprised, chyortik,” he directed a shrewd, accusatory gaze at me.

I shrugged, but there was no point in lying. “I met her last night,” I said. “We had a little chat.”

“Catching up with an old friend, eh?” he said in a mock-cheerful tone.

“She promised me safe passage through this country.”

“You never said.”

“You were busy.” I nodded my head at Hera without looking at her. “I didn’t want to bother you.”

“Chyortik,” he said in a low, exasperated voice. “You _never_ bother me.”

Despite myself, I smiled.

“You should’ve said. We should’ve discussed it,” he said, squeezing my hand earnestly. “What did you have to promise her in return?”

“Nothing.” And, as he looked at me skeptically, I reiterated: “ _Nothing,_  Athos. She’s our friend, remember? I told her we’re going to France, to meet up with Marie. She said to say hello.”

“So Marie is still around,” Athos said and gave me another _shrewd_ look.

“Yes.” I did not elaborate the feeling of relief, happiness even, that had flooded me when Marion alleviated my fears. Like the Titans, Marie was an ancient, a primal force of nature, and I had half-expected her to have reverted to water rather than clinging to her human form. I wasn’t even sure why I wanted to see her so badly. Except… except Marie had always been there in times of crisis, and together we had come up with glorious schemes. The one time that she wasn’t there to make plans and conduct cabals with me, the Duke of Alameda had ended up haunting Europe for a century.

“She didn’t join up though.” He indicated what he meant with a nod in the direction where the Hunt had disappeared.

“No.” I shook my head. “I got the impression that they fell out over it. Marie likes humans.”

Athos’ eyes lit up as he smiled his melancholy smile. “As do you, chyortik.”

I showed him my teeth.

“ _God is my strength._ ” The soft voice of Jesus interrupted our discussion. Athos and I looked around.

“What?” Athos said.

“God is my strength,” repeated Jesus. “Gavri’el.” He too pointed in the direction of the Hunt. “The Archangel Gabriel, that’s what his name means. _God is my strength._ ”

“Was he the bloke with the trumpet?” I said. “I wondered.”

“Yes, that was Gabriel. A relative of yours, I understand,” Jesus smiled at Grimley.

Grimley wrinkled his nose. “He might be in the Book of Enoch, but he’s not a Grigori.”

“The Book of Enoch refers to both good and bad Watchers,” I said. “Maybe he’s the other kind.”

“The other than what, M. l’abbé?”

“The other than you, Grigori,” I said smoothly.

“What is he doing here? That’s not his turf,” huffed Hera. It was rather rich coming from her, the Olympian goddess coming over the Alps like Hannibal’s elephants, but I let it slide.

“I believe he sometimes joins the Wild Hunt,” I said instead.

“He likes that sort of thing,” Jesus said and shrugged apologetically. “He has a spear.”

“What happened to the flaming sword?” asked Athos.

“You’re thinking of Michael,” said Jesus. “People always get them mixed up.”

Grimley cleared his throat. “As interesting as this theological debate is, gentlemen, lady, and as much as M. l’abbé would love to engage in it I’m sure, I believe it wise to proceed on our way.”

“The Watcher is right,” said Jesus. “It’s 1000 kilometres to Vannes, and we don’t know how bad it will get in France.”

“Very bad,” said Athos succinctly. “I’m sorry, Yeshua, but it looks like you won’t find any humans there to save, either.”

Jesus smiled a patient little smile. “We’ll see.” He flopped back into his seat, picked up his guitar and strummed it playfully. “ _For in this hope we were saved_ ,” he sang under his breath. “ _But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans_.”

Athos and I exchanged a look and then glanced up at the Holy Ghost who swayed gently in the luggage rack, cooing. Hera smirked, Grimley restarted the engine, Judas brayed.

I sank back into my seat and closed my eyes with a wordless groan worthy of the Spirit himself. Once we’d catch up with Marie, I contemplated asking her to cut my head off.

**France, winter 2017**

A canopy of yellow-grey hung above France. Half mist, half dust, skies and horizon had melded into one ghastly miasma, interspersed with black skeletons of towns and sudden flashes of feral eyes in the fog. Silence had fallen in the Ark as it wound and weaved between burned-out cars, trucks and tractors on the dead motorway. Inside the vehicles, we occasionally glimpsed the remains of passengers who had been all but pulverised as they tried to escape the blast. Grimley had long given up on dodging the bodies of people whose attempts to outrun the cloud of death had resulted in their remains fusing with molten concrete. He appeared to consider them nothing but vaguely annoying speed bumps.

“It’s like being back in Pompeii,” Athos whispered.

“Only this time they have no-one but themselves to blame,” I pointed out.

Athos turned away from the window and looked at me. “So this is what nuclear winter looks like,” he said.

“They knew how dangerous it was, and how unnecessary,” I said, narrowing my eyes at the dead sky. Despite my sunglasses, the diffused light was painful to my eyes. “They insisted on keeping the reactors running, even the wonky one in Belgium. Turns out all it takes is a small earthquake and it all goes kaboom!”

Athos smiled. “It goes what, chyortik?”

“Kaboom,” I repeated with emphasis. “It’s a technical term.”

“If you say so, doctor.”

“I shouldn’t have to explain it, professor.”

A mighty roar, a howl that tore through the veil of silence, rang out in the wilderness outside. Jesus’ eyes strained to penetrate the yellow haze. The Holy Ghost cooed, Sophia hooted, and the nervous clucking of our egg-laying hens reverberated somewhere in the bowels of the Ark, accompanied by the frantic braying of a very disgruntled Judas.

“Wolves,” I said.

“I doubt they’re real wolves,” Athos murmured, staring intently out of the window.

I rolled my eyes. “Not War, surely. Or have you heard the call to arms lately?”

“Are you still bitter that your attempt to kill the Din of War was thwarted, Aramis?”

“Not at all. Next time, I’ll try harder.”

“Only a god can kill a god.”

“Yes, so you and yours keep saying. Did it ever occur to you, my conceited godling, that the definition of what constitutes a god is rather fluid? The blood of gods flows in my veins, just as it does in yours. Who’s to say where demonishness ends and godhood begins?”

“Aramis!” He tried to sound exasperated, but I did hear laughter vibrate in his mellifluous voice. “What did I tell you about hubris, my chyortik?”

“You like that about me,” I stated as I slipped my hand casually under the open collar of his shirt.

“This is probably not the time.” Athos cast a quick glance at his stepmother, who was looking out of the window with rapt attention. If it _was_ Ares out there, Hera would _gloat_.

“Don’t worry, I’m not planning to jerk you off in full view of Jesus and your mum,” I told him.

“That’s not what I meant. This is probably not the time for a discussion about divinity versus demonology.”

“It’d give us something to do to while away the time as we’re waiting for Terror and Fear to manifest.”

“It’s probably not them. Why would they come here if there are no humans left to haunt?”

“Maybe Grimley’s scared. They might feed on his fears.”

We both looked at the Grigori at the wheel and then at each other.

“Grimley’s having the time of his life,” Athos said glumly. “I should’ve known that he’d thrive at the End of Days.”

The howling came closer, circling us as we delved deeper and deeper into the murky winterland. I gazed intently into the grey haze, but all that I could see were the blurred outlines of the woman with the scythe, as she weaved and glided through her rich harvest.

“Who, then?” I whispered, even as a suspicion formed in my mind.

“Werewolves,” Athos whispered back. “France is famous for them. The Beast of Gévaudan and its descendants, chasing us, catching up with-” He looked at me, eyes blazing. “You.”

I shook my head, my throat suddenly dry. My gaze dropped to his throat before I could stop myself, and Athos’ mouth twitched.

“It’s not the beast,” I said in a low voice. “I assure you.”

The intercom crackled and spat out a few words in Grimley’s voice: “Lady and gentlemen, to your left you can see the fallout of a nuclear blast, as exemplified in those feral beasts.”

A pack of large, hungry wolves had spilled onto the road. They were watching us with gleaming eyes, silent, motionless.

“They don’t look human,” I said.

Athos looked at me as if I’d gone mad. “They’re _wolves._ ”

“I realise that. They don’t look like wolves of the human era. They’ve changed.”

“They’re bound to mutate as a result of all this radiation. Remember the wildlife in Chernobyl?”

“Those had thirty years to develop mutations. These wolves were directly affected, yet they survived and they look changed already.”

“I know what happened!” Grimley’s voice boomed through the bus. “I’ve seen it in American films. There’s a distance – and I believe scientists don’t completely agree what distance it is, but if one were to stand there when a nuclear explosion goes off, one will become a superhero.”

“Can we kill him, Athos?” I asked in an undertone.

“Who’s going to cook for us?”

“Jesus can perform the miracle of the falafel.”

“Pardon me?” At the sound of his name, Jesus, who had been engrossed in the tableau outside, turned to us. “ _What_ do you need me to do?”

He sounded… angry. That was interesting. The anger was beneath the surface still, but I could sense it as it quickened his pulse and tightened his throat. I wondered what it’d take to break the dam.

Athos stood up, walked over to the Messiah and put his hand on his shoulder. “I’m afraid we won’t find any humans in France, Yeshua. I’m surprised there are still any animals left.”

A mountain of fur shot out of the woods and hurtled across the street in front of our bus, tusks gleaming. A wild boar, gorged, no doubt, on truffles choke full of caesium-137.

“Why did so many animals survive while humanity died?” I wondered aloud.

“They have a better sense of self-preservation than humans,” Hera said. “Like fairies. Like the creatures of yore who are now returning to the surface of the Earth. They don’t wait for disaster to strike, they don’t pray for deliverance. They run and hide, they burrow into the soil and hibernate at the bottom of the sea. And,” she added, crossing her arms, “the Titans don’t target them, and Gods protect them, for there is barely a God who does not have an animal familiar or avatar. We look after our own.”

“You didn’t look after humans,” Jesus said. “ _Madam._ ”

“They didn’t look after me. They abandoned me and my family and moved on to worship the bearded idol of a desert tribe who smelled of goats, we owe them _nothing._ ”

“You Hellenic deities were always corrupt and selfish. Humans _crucified_ me, and yet I saved them!”

Hera looked around pointedly. “And a very good job you did, little demigodling.”

The Son of Man and the Goddess of Marriage were facing each other, tempers rising, eyes flashing. I clasped Athos’ arm.

“Step back, Discord,” I said in a low voice.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Aramis, that’s not me.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Are you sure?”

The intercom crackled again. “Lady and gentlemen,” Grimley said, “We have reached our destination. Please be careful to take all your belongings with you when you leave the vehicle, I don’t want to have to carry everything. Again.”

“That’s not Vannes,” Hera said when we got off the bus. “I can’t smell the sea.”

“We’re in Orleans,” Athos explained. “We’re taking a boat from here. It’s going to be safer and quicker. Aramis and I have… strong ties to the river.”

I coughed delicately and Discord glared at me.

“Indeed, Madame,” I said. “Your stepson swallowed a lot of Loire water in his day.”

“Not as much as you,” Athos hissed at me from the side. “And, chyortik – if you so much as think of wisecracking about ‘that fish on The Simpsons’, I will personally get Grimley a ukulele and make him sit next to you for the entire voyage.”


	8. Koios

**Belle-Île-en-Mer, France, winter 2017**

To the song of nymphs, to the laughter of river gods, the Loire spat us out in Saint-Nazaire, where her waves mingled with the surf of the Ocean. This was where the ondines were born. Athos and I watched sweet water and salt water seethe and mate, and his hand clasped mine in a firm grip as the Atlantic wind yanked at our hair and coats. What new breed of ondinekind was being begotten here, in the poisoned waters or river and sea? Finally, Athos tore his gaze away from the grey water masses and squared his shoulders. “How do we get to Belle-Île, Aramis? I believe that’s your domain, M. l’Évêque.”

I bowed courteously, showing him my teeth. “We’ll take the boat.”

“Yes. I understand that. I didn’t expect us _all_ to walk on water,” Athos said. “Would you advise us to stay on _this_ boat, your Excellency, or find one better suited to sea travel? You do realise that once we set foot on salt water, so to speak, we’ll be trespassing on Oceanus’ territory. Are you prepared to face him?”

“With you by my side?” I said. “Always.”

He smiled. “Even unto death, Aramis?”

I lifted his hand to my mouth and kissed it. “You heard what the ondines told us. We will probably be safe. Marie has negotiated a truce with the Titans, Belle-Île is safe as long as she’s in charge.”

He sighed heavily, scanning the stormy horizon with a melancholy gaze. “Well. We’d better get going before we attract unwanted attention. Grimley!” he bellowed. “Where is that accursed angel?”

“Here, master.” The Grigori manifested behind our backs. “How can I serve you, master?”

“You can serve me by not giving me any of your Olympian lip,” Athos growled. The Mantle of Discord shimmered around his shoulders, and the fact that he was nervous was making me nervous in turn. My stomach rose and fell in the familiar, awful way. I desperately wanted to bite someone. On the upper deck, keeping his hands firmly on the wheel, Jesus looked down and caught my eye.

“Tell our skipper to go ahead. We’re going to risk it, and may gods have mercy on our souls,” Athos told his Watcher.

“It’s going to be all right,” I said in an undertone after Grimley had scurried off to deliver the message to Jesus and to serve Hera her afternoon tea.

Athos gave me a small watery smile. “You hate the water, kitten.”

“Not so much,” I said, while my stomach leapt, attempting to push bile up my throat.

“You’re positively green.”

“It’s the light.”

We both turned around, narrowing our eyes at the offensive yellow-grey mists that swirled above the mainland, mingling with the fumes from the swamps of la Brière. All of France was razed to the ground. All of France? No, one small island still held out against the forces of destruction. I smiled grimly. How fitting that it should be Armorica that held the last pocket of resistance. Here in windy Bretagne, the nuclear fallout wasn’t as bad as it had been in the centre of France. As we had floated down the Loire, both banks of the river had been void and dead. It had taken all our combined skills to coax out a couple of ondines to the surface of the water, and from them we learned that Marie had fortified Belle-Île.

A wave crashed into the boat, it leapt sideways, and I staggered against Athos, whose arms enveloped me as I burrowed my face in his shoulder.

The smell hit me long before we landed: the smell of blood, of death, of the ultimate sacrifice. I had encountered it on hundreds of battlefields, it was the smell of my youth. Seagulls darted above our heads and swooped down onto the rocks with almighty shrieks.

“You realise we’re approaching it from the wrong side,” Athos said. “The navigable harbours are in the north.”

“Jesus will steer us safely into port,” I said. “There was no point going all the way up to Vannes.”

“There is no port here,” Athos said and gave me an odd look.

_There’s Locmaria._

Neither of us spoke the name of the grotto, where centuries ago I had thought I’d killed Porthos and killed Athos instead. The ancient place of pagan sacrifice had been recommissioned: as we approached the coast, we saw a grove of stakes crowned with the remains of human corpses. The boat swayed, there was a scuffle at the wheel, and the Grigori took over, while Jesus came running on deck, his eyes ablaze with divine flames.

“They’re not crucified,” Athos said.

Jesus whirled around, fists clenched, eyes flaming. “Do you think that’s amusing?” he shouted. Athos took a step back in shock. “These people were tortured! They weren’t _killed_! They were left to die in greatest agony, for days! Who did that? That’s not the work of Titans! It must have been humans who did this to their fellow men. Oh, Father!” he groaned in agony. “ _Why_?”

Athos and I exchanged a wild look. “Um…” I said and subdued the urge to hide behind Athos, whose armour was flaring up. “I’m sorry?” I offered lamely.

“Aramis!” Discord hissed out of the corner of his mouth. “They’re _impaled_.”

“I can see that.”

“You know what that means, right?”

I frowned, watching Jesus who had thrown himself at the railing and was clutching it with both hands, as if urging the boat to go faster. “Something tells me they won’t get on.”

Jesus positively flew off the boat even before the bow hit dry land. It looked like he tried to tear a pole down with his bare hands and – even more amazingly – like he might succeed.

“Should we help him or stop him?” Athos said. I shrugged, helplessly. “Maybe Grimley could fetch an axe,” Athos looked back to the shore, where Grimley was supervising the disembarkation of the sheep (Jesus had forbidden us to eat them), chickens (one of whom appeared to be in the process of laying an egg), and Judas, while the Holy Ghost circled his head in as helpful a manner as possible. Hera had sat down on a rock with Sophia on her shoulder and was serenely nibbling M&Ms, taking everything in with great relish.

“Yeshua!” Athos called out, approached the Messiah and pulled him away from the impaled man. “You can’t help him now.”

“You think?” Jesus growled. “I am the resurrection and the life!”

“Yes, but,” Athos glanced back at me, but I was not getting involved. I had read about the Cleansing of the Temple, but watching the gruesome version thereof unfold before my eyes was disconcerting. In the background, the grotto of Locmaria lay dormant like a sleeping Titan behind a bulwark of rocks. I knew what had happened here. I knew why this place had been chosen. I knew, now, why our passage across the Atlantic Ocean had been tranquil.

“Do you really wish to bring them back to _this_?” Athos was saying to Jesus, who looked ready to smite him. “The world has ended!”

“Not yet!” Jesus ground out through clenched teeth.

“Their time has ended then. Humans are gone.”

“They can be resurrected.” Jesus glared at him.

“Listen!” Athos shook him by the shoulder. “I’d been resurrected, more than once. One time… I _begged_ to be left in the realm of the dead. There’s so much pain-” He broke off and lowered his voice. “The last times I came back, it was to love. That’s the one thing that makes it worth it.”

“You Greek deities are so selfish,” Jesus said with narrowed eyes and a look of disdain that also targeted Hera. “ _My_ resurrection meant something. It was meant to benefit _all_ humankind.”

“And does it still haunt you?” Athos flung the words at him, rather more nastily than necessary. Jesus’ face drained of blood, I could virtually feel its mighty throb in his heart and guts. “Do you really want to inflict it on them?”

Jesus staggered back, as if Athos had delivered a physical blow, and looked him up and down. “What?” he said and ran a hand through his long hair. “I realise you’re the God of Discord and it is in your nature to say such things, but have you forgotten why we’ve come here? It is to resurrect your,” he hesitated for a moment and his gaze slid to me, “ _friend_.”

“Yes!” Athos said. “Antinous will be among friends when he returns, among people who care for him.”

I felt my face go wooden at the sound of that speech, delivered in low, passionate tones. Athos must have known I could hear every word, as he continued to reason with Jesus: “And he was a God, Yeshua. Antinous was deified, he was worshipped by thousands, for hundreds of years. This poor bastard-” He looked up at the rotten corpse impaled on the pole. “What would he be coming back to? And in which state? We’ve seen wiedergänger on our way here, would you truly risk him,” he pointed to the corpse, “to become one of them?”

Jesus was staring at him with dark, unreadable eyes. I almost expected Athos to cave and admit he’d been pulling the arguments out of his ass, but, as usual, said ass was saved by the Grigori. “If Sirs are quite ready,” Grimley’s slick voice dripped into the tense silence like oil into fire. “We should go. I believe his Excellency knows the way to the citadel.” He bowed, insolently.

Athos took Jesus’ arm and led him down the stony path. I looked up into the stygian sky and offered my arm to Hera, who took it with a smile. Grimley prodded a sheep’s woolly arse, and the whole cavalcade set off towards the kingdom of the nymph.

Two and a half hours later, we were climbing the stelliform road that zig-zagged up to Citadelle Vauban. I looked around with proprietorial pride; Porthos and I had done a good job, the fortifications were still standing. Inside the compound, the antique cannons that I had personally installed to protect the fort stood daintily arranged in a circle on the lawn. A shrubbery of evergreens conjured up the impression of lushness, even in the middle of winter. Yes, I had chosen well, all those centuries ago. Belle-Île was paradise on Earth. It had always been prized for its strategic location, its fertile soil, its mild climate, and the abundant sources of sweet water that meant that even puny mortals could survive a prolonged siege.

The man who came towards us with open arms was not a mortal. “Tatic!” Vlad the Impaler was shouting, waving his hat in a gesture of welcome. “Uncle! I’m so glad to see you!” He threw his arms around Athos, kissing his cheeks with true Romanian ardour. He let go of Athos with one arm only to pull me in likewise, crushing me to his chest and showering me with affection like a Carpathian Shepherd. “Marie _said_ we’ll be seeing you again,” he said, letting go of us at last and beaming like a son of Helios. I resisted the urge to wipe dog slobber off my face. “She’s not here at the moment, she had to go and discuss things with-” He jabbed his finger downwards in an eloquent gesture. “You know how it is. Apocalypse, huh? Who would’ve thought it.”

“Vladic,” Athos said, smiling indulgently they way he always did when he found himself on the receiving end of Dracula’s enthusiastic affection. “I am pleased to see you. Me and Aramis, both.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me closer, squeezing my fingers. I squeezed back, hard.

“And you brought friends,” Dracula smiled with his splendid teeth and put his hat back on with a flourish. “I’m delighted to welcome you to my humble abode.”

“Vlad, my friend,” Athos said, clasping the beaming vampire’s arm. “Permit me to introduce you to the Queen of the Gods, Hera, the Dowager of Olympus and my stepmother. Hera, this is Vlad of the House of Drăculești, a prince of blood and former voivode of Wallachia.”

“Madame!” Dracula ejaculated, whipped his hat off again – I was certain he had only put it on in order to perform this gesture – and bowed deeply, kissing Hera’s hand in a decidedly continental manner. Even after all those years in London, he had not caught Englishness. “Enchanté! It is a great honour to welcome you to my home.”

“ _Your_ home?” I asked, delicately.

Athos cleared his throat. “You remember my Grigori of course.”

“Of course! What ho, Grimley!”

“And this is Jesus Christ.”

“Our Saviour,” I added.

“ _The_ Jesus Christ?”

“The very same,” Athos said. “Yeshua, Vlad is our- that is to say we-”

Jesus was glaring at Dracula, white faced, eyes ablaze.

“Sang Dieu!” I muttered.

“It was you, wasn’t it?” Jesus said in a low voice that shook with fury.

“Morts touts les diables!” I added and stepped back, pulling Hera with me.

With the speed of one of Zeus’ thunderbolts, Jesus struck Vlad across the face with the reins he’d ripped off Judas. Dracula screamed, from shock rather than pain, and Jesus whipped him again, advancing like a fury, before Athos grabbed him from behind and held him in a hammerlock. “Aramis!” Discord shouted. “You get Vlad!”

“Get him yourself, he’s your-” Athos glared at me. “All right, all right, I’m getting him. Calm down, Vlad!” I said, stepping in front of the seething vampire, whose eyes were red and whose fangs and claws were drawn. “It’s not like he sprinkled you with holy water. Speaking of which – Grimley, get that blessed bird off me! Shoo! Holy-!” Vlad tore off his hat again and waved it wildly, attempting to swat the feral pigeon out of the air.

Hera clapped enthusiastically. “This is excellent. I knew you were good value, darling. Discord always is.” She threw the folds of her cape over her shoulder and, head raised, shoulders squared, stepped through the open gate into the hotel. Judas trotted behind her, nodding serenely on each step.

“What did you bring here?” Vlad screamed at me, flashing his teeth as if he seriously contemplated biting _me_. “Who are these brutes?”

“Two of the Holy Trinity,” I said, holding his wrists in a grip of iron. “Calm down, Vlad. That’s Jesus Christ. He has a thing about impaling people. As a matter of fact, he doesn’t like the idea of killing humans at all, regardless of the method.”

“What?” Dracula stopped foaming with rage and stared over my shoulder at Athos who was talking down Jesus. “What _the fuck_ is he doing with you then? Pardon my French,” he added as an aside to Athos.

“It’s a long story.” I sighed. “Can we come inside? The wind is seriously messing up my hair.”

“Oh. Of course. Do come inside, I invite you.” The fangs withdrew, the red glint in his eyes faded, Dracula was the gracious host once again. He leaned in and whispered in my ear. “In that case, better keep him away from the basement, Uncle.”

Suddenly, I felt the need to find a church, and soon.

***

Our room had a welcoming, rather warm air, in which I recognized Vlad’s hand, down to the cheerfully fluffed up pillows and a perfectly square morsel of honey cake proudly displayed on an ornate saucer on the corner table.  Dracula always did have a flare for hospitality, I recalled with a fond smile.  Lost beneath the shroud of my grief, I had narily spared a thought to our adopted vampiric progeny, but finding him alive, even if reverted to his prior life hobbies, filled me a sense of relief not unlike paternal pride.

Perhaps Hera had been rubbing off on me after all.

A timid knock on the door summoned me and I threw it open without bothering to ask who my unexpected visitor was. In a flash, I had found my arms full of the lithe body of the trembling Rohan nymph.

“Marie,” I sighed in contentment, holding her close as her arms clutched my back with preternatural strength.

“You’re alive,” she exhaled into my neck.  “Merciful gods, I was so worried!”

I drew back to have a better look at her face.  “Were you, Marie?”

A clenched fist petulantly pounded against my chest.  “I had to put on a brave face for Vladic, but you should know better than to ask me that, Professor!” she chided me and ran her long fingers through my hair and beard.  “I will never grow tired of looking at this face, no matter how long I exist.”

“Sentimental nymph,” I teased her, pressing the palm of my hand into her lower back.  “Would you have wept for me again, as you once did at my grave at Bragelonne?” Rather than wait for a declaration or another reproach, I captured her lips with my own and found great succor in them.

She pulled away at last, brushing her long hair out of her bright eyes.  “Where is Aramis?” she asked, looking about the room.

I emitted a soft laugh.  “Oh, you know Aramis.  He has not broken his old habits of running to the arms of the Mother Church when he isn’t feeling completely himself.  I imagine he found a chapel to hole up in.”

“Why isn’t he feeling completely himself?” She gave me one of her shrewd looks from which there was never anywhere in the world to hide.

Now was the time to speak and tell her why we had come to Bretagne.  I opened my mouth and closed it, furrowing my brow in uncertainty.  “We… did not come here for the exclusive pleasure of seeing you,” I began.  Her hand was propped up against the flare of her hip in a painfully familiar, unmistakably her own gesture.  “Although, we will doubtlessly need your help in what we came here to accomplish.”

Her eyes softened.  “Of course, you’re fighting a war.  If it is a refuge you seek...”

“The war is lost, Marie.  Hera and I are pretty much all that’s left of Olympus.”

“Hera!”

“I know what you must think of me saving her, but I could not in good conscience…”

“ _Hera!?!_ ”

“Don’t be so judgmental,” I attempted to placate her by taking her hand into mine.  “You might actually quite like her once you get to know her.”  Did I?  Well, that was a contemplation for another time.

“You brought _Hera_ here? _You_? I don’t imagine she’s my biggest fan after the joke you and I played on her back in the seventeenth century!”

“Perhaps we should take a step back,” I suggested, sitting down upon the dappled eiderdown.

“Of course,” she stared at me as I imagine one does at an asylum escapee.  “Let’s recap. Olympus has fallen.  You and Aramis traveled here for an unknown purpose for which you might need my help.  You have traversed half of Europe in what I heard was a tourist bus with a donkey and a dirty hippie, and a woman whom I now find out is the Queen of the Gods.  And Aramis is probably _praying_.  Have I missed anything?”

“We came here,” I began again.  This part always seemed most difficult to explain.  “We came here because I found out that an old friend of mine’s remains had been thrown into the sea at this very site.  And I’ve come to collect them.”

“An old friend,” she repeated.

“Yes, Marie.”

“Just as you and I are old friends.”

“ _Yes_ , Marie.”

“Tell me who he is?” she requested with uncustomary caution.  I do not know how I must have looked to her, but as our eyes met, her gaze softened, and she walked over to the bed, scooping my face into both her hands.  “Who is he, Athos?”

“He’s just a boy,” I whispered at last.  “And he doesn’t… he doesn’t belong in the water.”

The touch of her lips against my forehead was soothing and warm, and it chased the gathering clouds away.  “I will speak to my kin,” she promised as her breasts swelled with breath against my chin.  I exhaled and sank against her with relief.  Gently, her fingers stroked the curls at the nape of my neck, and then, “ _Hera_!” she exclaimed again.

We both fell over onto the bed, laughing.  “I will tell you everything that’s happened,” I promised.  “It has been… quite the Odyssey.”

***

Had the citadel still been under my management, there would’ve been a chapel on the premises. Since the fortifications had been repurposed to house a hotel and a museum, I had to walk to the Église du Christ-Roi at the other side of the harbour. “Christ-Roi, pah!” I muttered as I stepped into the narthex. I pushed back my hood, shook out my hair and crossed myself, fixing my gaze at the Virgin Mary whose altar stood underneath the rose window. I approached her slowly.

“Your son is not a king, Madame,” I said, bowing and baring my teeth at her. “Trust me. I’ve met kings, and he’s not like them. I suppose he might’ve been a _modern_ Royal, only he’d never spend millions on a Royal wedding when there are people sleeping in the streets, and he’d not invest his money in a Cayman Islands fund, either. I believe he would genuinely give it all to the poor.” I knelt before the altar, lowered my head and waited for the nihil to fill my mind and heart. Back in the day, after I’d first died, I had felt nothing when walking on hallowed ground. Once I set foot into a church, my mind was blank and darkness poured into my skull. I cowered in that darkness, and it took me under its wings, shielding me from my own thoughts and feelings – impenetrable, soothing, eternal. That had changed as I learned to reconcile my two souls, and sacred ground no longer blinded me. I’d learned to control it, and sometimes, in times of great trepidation, I immersed myself into darkness like a deep sea diver in the abyss of the ocean and let nihil claim me.

I resurfaced to a soft pressure on my shoulder. Kneeling, my head bent, I knew who it was whose hand I felt through the layers of my clothing. My godling had come for me once like this in Snagov, and I’d followed him ever since. But Athos was no longer my godling. He was a fully-fledged pagan god who had absorbed the residual energy of Olympus. Across the centuries, I heard Eris laugh: nothing had ever driven us apart but Discord, and Discord would be our downfall once again.

“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death,” I whispered.

Fingers squeezed my shoulder. “You’re immortal, Aramis.”

“They call me undead,” I said. “Now and the hour of my death are one, always.”

“You are being very morbid, my boy.”

“It _is_ the End of Days!”

“And yet you are still standing.” She paused and then asked gently. “Of what are you afraid?”

“Athos!” I said before I could stop myself. “He’s slipping away from me, and I don’t know what to do.”

“Yes, that’s always a risk when you’re involved with a God.” She let go of my shoulder and sat down at the foot of her altar with her back to herself. “They’re not very good at relationships with humans. Well, with non-deities. They’re not very good at relationships with each other, either, if it comes to that: just look at what poor Hera had to endure in her marriage to that brute.”

“That brute was Athos’ father,” I complained. “And now that Zeus is gone, Athos is… Athos has… he has imbibed the spirit of Olympus and is growing more and more erratic. He was much more human when he was just a demigod.”

“That’s the point of the demigods, to be the go-between for Gods and Men. That’s why my Yeshua is the Son of Man.”

“Technically, he’s the Son of Woman.” I inclined my head before her.

She smiled. “Come, Aramis.” She reached out, took my hand and pulled me to my feet with her. “Let’s go and find him. Has he been eating? He hasn’t just been feeding you, has he?”

“He has been eating.” I didn’t share with the Mother of God that I’d drank her son’s blood.

“Has he found any humans?”

“No.” I sighed, for the lack of humans was distressing to me too – albeit for different reasons. “So far, we’re his only flock.”

“Maybe that’s how it was meant to be: his destiny is not to save humanity but to save you.” She looked at me sideways. “His lost sheep.”

“Madame!” I exclaimed. “I hope you realise that you are the only person on Earth whom I’d tolerate to refer to me as a sheep.”

“No, I realise you’re more of a goat type of person, Aramis,” she was laughing openly now. “Do you wish me to answer your prayer? Well then: go and talk to Athos. Pray to him, if necessary. He will listen.”

“How do you know? Gods very rarely listen to prayers these days.”

“Ah, but as you’ve pointed out just now: this is the End of Days. Gods are just as desperate for worshippers as mortals are for Gods.”

“Perhaps,” I muttered, looking up at the walls of the citadel. I would find Athos, I would strip him of the armour of Discord, and I would reseal our covenant.

Unfortunately, by the time we’d come back to the Citadelle Vauban, Grimley had served dinner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently, Belle-Ile is a really nice place to live (and survive a siege). We looked at photos of the hotel in the Citadel for research, and it's not too shabby. Aramis would've done more with the interior design though. Some of the carpets are positively barbaric.


	9. Theia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year, Audience! Unlike our Heroes, you made it out of "winter 2017" (well, we hope, tbf we haven't heard from some of you in a while...). May 2018 treat you well!

***

“Does branzino have scales?”

I was ashamed to admit that my hand twitched towards my no-longer-existing mobile to ask Google that very thing. How was it possible that in the short time this technology had existed, I, a three-millennia old creature, had grown so reliant upon it?

“Yes, Madam,” the Grigori bowed towards the Virgin. “The branzino does have scales. And fins. You may enjoy it as soon as it is blessed by a Rabbi. Would M. l’Évêque do the honors?”

“I’m not a Rabbi, you pestilence,” Aramis stabbed his own fish with vindictive flare. “Unless, of course, Your Ladyship would like me to… bless your dinner.”

“Bless all of you, I’m ravenous!” Hera declared and cut into her food with a flourish. “It is exhausting, darling,” she addressed me as an aside, “getting sustenance out of the creatures of the earth and sea. I do not know how you have survived without being able to tap into divine essence.”

“It is a pity he cannot drink his own blood,” Grimley intoned, pouring the wine over Hera’s shoulder.

“Obsequious gnat,” I snarled at him.

“Yeshua, would you mind terribly turning the lady’s wine into ambrosia?” Miriam asked, enjoying her almost kosher fish.

“Ima, that is crossing faith streams, I simply…”

“You were able to heal her!”

“That is different. Healing is intrinsic. Ambrosia is inherently…”

“Olympian,” Hera sighed and her hand alighted upon my thigh under the table. “There is something to be said for true Olympian stock. I have gone for far too long without and I’m so far from home,” she lamented, her fingers pressing into my flesh. Across the table from me, Aramis’ fangs extended quietly and his eyes darkened.

“Try Vlad’s honey cake, it’s delicious,” Marie extended her delicate, white arm across the table. “I hear you enjoyed baked goods as a form of propitiation, my Queen.”

Distrustfully, Hera took a morsel off the plate. “I do not recognize your face,” she said, “but there is something quite… familiar about your presence.”

“I do not see how that could possibly be,” Aramis cut in. “You and our hostess have never met before. Her domains are right here in France.” It was quite discordian of him to obfuscate while telling the truth and I smiled down into the gills of my fish.

Hera narrowed her eyes looking from the nymph to my demon. “The cellar here is excellent,” I said to no one in particular.

“When I look at you in a certain light, you look just like him,” Hera sighed, leaning too close to me again. “Sometimes, I think I can turn around and he’ll be right there, transformed into a bird or a frog.” The Holy Ghost cooed over our heads in glaring disapproval. At a loss, I extended my hand under the table and fed Sophia my bread. “What was your name again?” Hera turned her attention back upon our hostess.

“Marie,” the nymph smiled.

“Everyone has the same bloody name,” Hera muttered. “Everyone is named after the fucking Virgin these days.”

“I am named after the sea,” Marie pointed out calmly.

“Are you truly a virgin?” Vlad inquired, sidling up to Miriam like a sudden burst of mist.

“Don’t embarrass me, Vladic,” I uttered under my breath. “She’s not a virgin. She’s _the_ Virgin.”

“It isn’t a question of semantics,” Aramis cut in gaily, “it is a matter of faith. She’s a virgin!” he proclaimed with all the certainty of an almost-Pope.

“Truly!” Vlad exclaimed, clasping his hands together. “How magnificent!”

“Don’t you dare touch my ima!” Christ snarled across the table, his butter knife aimed roughly at Dracula’s left eye. “Don’t even look at her. In fact, it would be best if you were never in the room with her at the same time.”

“Well, that’s a bit childish, Yeshua,” Hera stared at Christ. “It _is_ the End of Days, after all. You don’t want your mother to _die_ a virgin, do you?”

I chuckled despite myself. On the other side of the table, the Rohan nymph was giving me a filthy look accompanied by an eyebrow wiggle. I gave her a barely perceptible (or so I hoped) shake of the head and attempted to coax Sophia from under the table. I felt the entire discussion was in need of some immediate postprandial wisdom.

“She cannot die,” Christ stated decisively. “She has already been Assumed. She’s only here…”

“To make sure you don’t try to sacrifice yourself again, yes, my little punim,” Miriam admitted joyfully.

I could have been the bigger man, yes, but I could not help from turning towards Jesus and mouthing “punim” at him with my most beatific smile. He flipped me off.

“Marie!” Hera exclaimed suddenly, grabbing my forearm. “Marie, the Rohan nymph Marie? The same Marie who found a way to humiliate me by _fucking_ you right under my nose! _That_ Marie?”

“Ah, Madam has an excellent memory,” I deflected, picking her hand off my forearm and pressing a gallant kiss to it.

“I have never! The jumped up nymph! And you!” If gods were known for having aneurysms, I might have worried. Still, Hera’s eyes burned in her face like meteors about to crash upon mine and Marie’s heads, if belatedly. “They all _laughed_ at me! Your Father and your siblings! Laughed! At _me_! At the Queen of the Gods because of a pair of fucking _gloves_!” She rose from the table, her back rigid, her claws poised as if to strike. I pushed my chair back too and found Sophia protectively flapping to the top of my head just as Aramis exposed all his teeth.

“You are the Goddess of Women!”

We all turned towards Marie, who was also up on her feet, her own eyes burning with the flame I have known so well over the centuries.

“Do you not see the irony of what you’ve done? The Goddess of Women! To punish womankind by keeping a specimen like your stepson away from them? I understand your desire for vengeance, for cruelty even. But it was not him you punished. It had been me! And countless others who were far less brave than I had been. Should we, women, not be entitled to the same pleasures so easily afforded to _men_?”

She had said _men_ with such derision that I shuddered despite the fact that there was a defense of me buried somewhere deep in her harangue.

Hera stood dumbfounded, one hand pressed against her chest in an almost operatic pose. “I… had not thought of it that way,” she finally spoke. “I admit, at the time I only wanted to punish my willful and idiotic daughter for taking up with a mortal whore’s bastard.”

“Hey now…” I could not help but cut in. “My mother was a good woman. I echo Marie’s sentiments. As a Goddess of Women, you should have done better.”

“Remember who you are, Hera!” Marie stated with ardor. “Yours is the power of the Divine Feminine! The miracle of womanhood! Our first blood is yours, as is the sacred time of childbirth, and even in the instance of our death, you are the Divine Mother!”

“It was Father who plagued your life with his constant philandering,” I chimed in, picking up Marie’s thread. “But you loved him, so you could not act out against him. Still, you know deep down that your rage was the result of his wrongdoing, not anyone else’s.”

“As the Divine Mother, it should have been your job to care and support your husband’s son, not persecute him,” Marie continued in a great passion. “But you love him now, do you not? I see the way you look at him. What joy he brings you!” Hera glanced over at me and her eyes again took on the soft, bovine look that frightened me more than her rage. “I was there to provide him with care and support when you could not be. That is all! That I had to work within the confines of your curse, well, that is no one’s fault but your own, Hera.”

The Rohan nymph had ever been brazen and rash, but never so gloriously as that night. I nearly applauded her audacity.

Hera stood transfixed, her eyes fixed upon an invisible horizon as Marie’s words washed like breaking waves over her. Then, a shiver ran through her limbs. A shimmer of gold radiated in a flash through her body, a warm glow that made her appear as if she had been floating in luminescence.

“I am restored!” she exhaled with exaltation. “I am connected to the seat of my power again!” She reached across the table, clasping Marie’s hands into her own. “Oh, thank you, Marie! Thank you for reminding me who I truly am!”

During the stunned silence that stretched across the dining room table, Miriam’s voice cut like the knife that she put the branzino to. “Are we really never going to talk about why you let my son get crucified?”

“Mom!” Jesus buried his head in his arms.

“Yes, sorry about that,” I waved them both off, still unable to tear my eyes away from the sight of Hera Restored. “The other guy was just hotter. Nothing personal.”

Hera’s face beamed down upon me, still radiating a golden gloriole around her head. “My son, Discord,” she smiled, her fingers brushing my chin. “Always the aesthete.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Vlad sidle up to the Virgin again. “I am sure Tatic meant no harm, Madam. And you really should try my honey cake. It is 100% organic rose honey, made by bees I keep here myself.”

I exchanged a helpless look with Aramis, who appeared once more as if he was in desperate need of a quiet chapel, although which deity he’d want to pray to was rather obscure under the circumstances.

“Kyrios, shall I fetch more wine, or shall we skip straight to digestifs?” Grimley inquired, vibrating with barely contained glee.

“The only thing this house is missing is a resurrected catamite,” Aramis said and rose from his seat. “If you’ll excuse me, ladies, Lord, etc. I have a sudden bout of indigestion and need to lie down in a cold and dark place.”

“Traitor,” I mouthed at him as he abandoned me.

“Cognac!” Grimley pronounced with a flourish. I contemplated giving him a thrashing, for old time’s sake, but Sophia burrowed into my chest and I merely returned my attention to the fish. The branzino also looked at me aghast.

“I’m sure he’s exceptionally pretty,” Jesus threw at me with derision, “as you are insatiably shallow, Athos.”

“Who are we talking about again?” Marie asked, coyly nibbling on the blasted honey cake.

Behind my chair, I could practically feel the Grigori stand proudly at attention as he declaimed, “Antinous!”

***

My mood was such that I’d have happily lied down in Vlad’s coffin and pulled the lid over my head. Athos couldn’t know what he was doing; it was the Discordian spirit that urged him on. He’d permitted Hera, _of all gods_ , to fondle him under the table. And I had seen the look that passed between him and Marie in the dining room. The nymph, I was convinced, had greeted Athos much more effusively than she had greeted me. My teeth hurt as I clenched them, stretched out flat on my back on a bench in the hammam.

The door opened, and a familiar figure appeared before me. “Aramis! We didn’t have the chance to talk, but I am happy to see you.” Marie sank to her knees next to my bench, folded her hands on my shoulder and rested her chin on them. “What is it?”

I snorted with laughter. “Guess.”

She brushed a lock of hair from my forehead. “Who would’ve thought we’d live to see the apocalypse,” she said and laughed. “You certainly made sure that I wouldn’t live to see anything anymore, once upon a time, M. l’Évêque.”

“You found a way to thwart me.”

“It took me a while.” She sighed and her warm breath settled on my cheek. “I’m not here to talk about the old times, Aramis.”

“What would you like to talk about?”

 “How happy I am to see you.”

“Are you?”

“Yes. I am. I missed you.”

“As much as you missed Discord? I notice that you jumped into his arms the moment you learned of our arrival.”

“Had you not gone to church, I’d have jumped into your arms too.” Her warm lips moved against my jaw. “Remember our Italian honeymoon? It was fun.”

“Marie!” I began and was cut off short by her hand moving across my chest.

“Yes?”

“Is this really the time to be frivolous?” 

“What else is there?” She shrugged carelessly. “Civilisation has ended, Porthos’ family have gone berserk and are even now conquering Asia with the help of Himalaya, all we can do is wait it out.”

“Marie!” I was scandalised. “I’ve never known you so passive.”

“Passive, Aramis?” She raised herself off me and glared. “Do you know how much effort it cost me to negotiate this?” She indicated our surroundings with a sweeping gesture. “The morgens of the Bretagne are my kin, but they don’t know if they can trust me. I have worn the human shape for too long. I even contemplated going back-”

“What?”

“Throwing myself in the water. Like you did in 1665.”

“How do you know that?”

“You looked into the watery abyss, Aramis, and it looked back at you. And then it told me about it. But that was a long time ago, water under the bridge.” She laughed. “It wasn’t easy, to persuade them to leave this place alone.”

“Why did you keep it?”

“For sentimental reasons, perhaps? To make sure Vlad has a home? Because I have a human body and need oxygen and fresh water to survive? There are many reasons. I’m not ready to give up on humanity just yet.”

“And yet you permitted humans to be slaughtered.”

“That was necessary, and you know that,” she shot back. “You, too, propitiated the Old Ones with human sacrifice in Locmaria. It was the only way to keep this place.”

“It certainly looked like Dracula had fun with it.”

“Aramis!” It was Marie’s turn now to be scandalised. “Since when do you object to the killing of humans? Is it that Jesus Christ, did he persuade you that it’s a bad thing?”

“It is a bad thing,” I said. “There are none left. You and I _need_ humans, Marie.”

“I certainly do,” she admitted. “This body won’t last forever. But you? As long as you have Discord, you’ll be fine. And he’s in full god mode now, I felt the power come off him-”

“I bet you did.”

Marie grimaced. “We haven’t fucked. I wouldn’t do this to you.”

I started to laugh. One or two heartbeats later, Marie did too. “Yes, I can see how that doesn’t sound convincing,” she gasped eventually. “I wouldn’t do this to you now. Not when Discord is being, well, Discord.”

“He really is, isn’t he?” I said hungrily. “It’s not just my imagination.”

“He is. He’s glorious. Utterly magnificent. His stepmother tries to get into his pants.”

“Those Hellenic deities are a right pain in the ass,” I said. “And of course Athos insisted on saving the two worst offenders. I wish I’d thrown a rock at Ares and knocked him into a Titan when I had the chance.”

“That wouldn’t have prevented the uprising. There are other gods of war.”

“Yes, but Ares is the one that keeps ruining my life.”

“He might be useful yet.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. I’ll think about it, and so should you. Use your nemeses to your advantage, Aramis. Remember our Parisian years? When d’Artagnan used to sniff around Athos, and you weren’t permitted to eat him?”

“D’Artagnan!” I snarled at the memory of the Gascon whelp. My dearest, albeit shortest, bosom companion.

“He annoyed you, yet you found ways to use him to your advantage. Just think of Ares as of an overgrown d’Artagnan. They both have a rather doggy disposition.”

“Ares certainly is a crotch-sniffer.”

“It runs in the family.”

“If his mother sniffs Athos’ crotch, I will rip her head off,” I informed Marie.

“I’ll talk to Hera,” she said and kissed me briefly on the mouth. “I’ll warn her off Discord. Tell her he has a massive dick, those ancient Greeks don’t like that sort of thing.”

“Better not. She might have a weird fetish. I wouldn’t put it past her, all those years being married to Zeus, all that repression… She’s bound to run wild now, especially if she falls under your influence, my wily nymph.”

Marie grinned. “I could distract her.”

“You could do that, if you don’t mind unsolicited gropage.”

“And then…”

“And then?”

“And then, my crafty créature de la nuit, we can make plans.”

“Marie!” I said with fervour. “You’ve no idea how happy this makes me. It is the reason why I came here.”

“Oh?” She raised her eyebrows and fluttered her lashes. “And there’s me thinking you’re here to raise Athos’ boytoy from the dead?”

My fangs tingled, but I bit down on them. “It is Athos’ wish, and I promised to help,” I said stiffly. “It’s my fault that the boy ended up here.”

“I know,” Marie said cheerfully.

“How?” I frowned. “Of course. The morgens.”

She nodded. “The Princess Dahut was delighted with the gift you made her. Apparently, the Divus is just as pretty and pliant after death as he was before.”

“I’m not here to discuss the catamite’s looks. I’m here because Athos wished it. I do feel responsible,” I admitted grudgingly.

“I should think so! Seeing as you were the one who dumped him into the sea,” she laughed. I glared at her, but the nymph was unabashed.

“When I made the promise to help get the… Antinous back, Athos truly had lost everything and he was… shattered, Marie. It was bad, all I could think of was that he’d go and get himself killed any minute. Antinous was a Divus, a link to the glory of the Old Gods, and raising him gave Athos a purpose. It felt wrong to stand in his way.”

“So you’ll help.”

I grimaced as if I’d just accidentally bitten into the neck of a quantity surveyor. “If I have to.”

“You should be there when we get him back.”

“Oh, I’ll be there.” I flashed my teeth at her. “Don’t worry.”

“That’s settled then,” Marie said and stood. “I’ll tell Discord you want to talk to him, shall I? Or shall I tell Vlad to get a separate bedroom ready for you?”

 “You might as well,” I said with the greatest patience and mildness. “It’s not like Athos and I have been actually sleeping together since the apocalypse started.”

“Oh?” The nymph stood very still and I could feel her trembling with the effort of doing justice to the issue at hand, i.e. not laughing.

“I live like a monk, Marie,” I confessed. “I had more sex when I lived in the Jesuit convent, lodging like a Charteux!”

“Ah, that would be when you were fucking my Bourbon cousin, non?”

“Yes, yes.” I waved my hand. “But now I feel my virginity growing back.”

“You mean like the Virgin Mary?” The peals of laughter were unmistakable in her voice. “You poor man. How long has it been?”

“Vlad will be hitting on me any day now.”

“How long, Aramis?”

“What?” I abandoned my tale of woe grudgingly to answer her question. “We _made love_ in Lucerne.”

Marie shrieked with laughter. “That was what, two days ago? How long did it take you to traverse France?”

“It’s not that it was very long ago, Marie.” Clearly the nymph didn’t appreciate the gravity of the situation. “But it hardly ever happens anymore! After Olympus had fallen, he went and locked himself up in a cave for weeks, leaving me alone with the Grigori. Who, by the way, is lucky he came out of it alive. And when Athos finally left his hermitage, we had to deal with the Holy Family, and then we travelled to France, and he’s become full Discord somewhere along the way. I never appreciated what it truly meant when his Father deified him. His blood tasted more potent than ever before and his armour would occasionally manifest, which, I must admit, gave me quite a thrill. But now - Marie, I feel like I’m one of his Father’s mortal lovers. Athos is flirting with his stepmother, in true Olympian fashion. He even called me his little Semele, and it _irks_ me.”

“Don’t flash your teeth at me, chéri,” Marie said. “Save that for Discord.”

“He said love was dead.”

“But she came back.”

“So he needs his sister to be around to believe that what we have is real? Now, that _is_ Olympian.”

“Have you told him any of this? You haven’t, have you?”

“What makes you think that?”

“Well,” she looked around. “Since you’re skulking in the hammam, rather than having a lie-down in the comfort of your suite, I assumed you’re avoiding him. Hence my suggestion to give you a separate room so that you can both sulk in peace.”

I hesitated for a moment or two. “On second thought, a separate bedroom would be a mistake, with Hera in the house and the catamite imminent.” I stretched out on the bench again and closed my eyes, breathing slowly and listening to the pounding of my blood. “If you see him and can pry him away from mummy dearest, ask him to come to me.”

Before the door closed behind her, Marie poured balm into my aching heart. “Don’t forget, Aramis: he might be the God of Discord, but you are a King among demons.”

***

Like Aragorn in _The Two Towers_ , he threw open the door and stood, backlit, his hair dishevelled, his eyes glowing with Discordian flames; he stood and smouldered and stared at me across the marble-tiled room.

“Well?” I greeted him. “Are you going to just stand there? Are your wings of Discord too large to fit through the door? Or is it your head?”

A smile slashed across his beautiful face. He sauntered towards me like a swashbuckler, and his armour gleamed around him. I didn’t stir, I merely watched him move and smirk, my proud Olympian _theos_ , whom I loved with all my heart and whom I wanted to tear apart limb for limb with my teeth.

“The nymph said you wanted to talk to me,” he said in his proudest, most noble tone as he gazed down at me with eyes that were the colour of embers in a blazing fire. “Speak.”

Stretched out on the bench, one arm folded under my head, I smiled slowly up at him, half-closing my eyes and showing him the tips of my fangs between my parted lips.

“I’m not your acolyte, Discord,” I said. “You do not grant me permission to address you. I do not require it.”

His smile broadened, displaying his beautiful teeth. “Is chyortik in a Mood?” he asked in a voice that vibrated with the roll of thunder. When he stretched out his arm, the Mantle of Discord fell from it in shimmering folds. A phasganon appeared in his hand and he pushed the tip of the blade delicately between my legs. “What can we do to snap you out of it, I wonder?”

“You can’t do anything, Discord,” I said with that coldness that descended over me on important occasions. My blood was a glacial stream and my mind was millions shards of ice. “Discord has no power over me.”

“Is that so?” Athos purred and twirled the sword between my legs.

“Yes,” I said simply, watching his face. “There is but one worshipper of Discord around here, and that’s Hera. The goddess who’d cursed you when you were a young mortal, remember? Remember him, Athos?”

He threw back the heavy drapery of his mantle and raised his chin proudly. “You have often proclaimed yourself a worshipper of Discord, Aramis,” he spoke my name with a gentle purr in his voice. “Have you forgotten it already, like you’ve forgotten so many things? Do you sometimes wonder how much you truly remember and how much are merely your own fancies?”

“I did not forget that I love you, Athos,” I said. “But I have often heard you accuse me of worshipping Jesus, and now that he’s here in our midst – do you see me prostrate myself before him?” I grabbed his wrist, for the sword had crept too close to my crotch for comfort. “I do not prostrate myself easily, my prideful Olympian. And if I ever granted you power of me, it was because I love the man, not because I worship the god.”

In a flash of gold, he’d straddled me and pinned my arms down, hovering above me like his father in his aquiline form must have hovered above Ganymedes. “But I am a god, Aramis,” he said softly and brushed his lips against mine. “I cannot be anything else.”

“No,” I said. “Hera is a goddess who doesn’t know how to be anything else. She’s never lived among humans. She’s never loved any humans. You have. You and Jesus Christ have this in common.”

Deep within those dark eyes, Olympian flames flickered. The fires that had burnt down Troy. The Discordian spark kindled by his sister Eris who had been guided by nothing but the one imperative of her nature and who had, in the end, brought about her own downfall.

“Hera had cursed you once before, stripping you of your mortality,” I whispered into the small space between us where electricity sparkled and heat rose. “She’s putting another curse on you now, more subtle perhaps but just as destructive: she’s stripping you of your humanity.”

“You hate her, Aramis,” Athos said. “I’ve never known you to hate a powerful woman before.”

“She’s not a woman. She’s a goddess. Nothing more.”

“You can’t be more than a god, my little demon.”

“You can,” I said. “And I am not a little demon.”

I closed my eyes and focused: focused on the beat of my own blood and of his. Focused on the ancient stones that entombed us. Athos was the rock upon which I had built my church, but the Island of Beauty was the rock upon which I had built my fortress: the ancient stones remembered the blood of men I’d spilled in Locmaria. The morgens in the Gulf of Morbihan stirred in the depths of the Ocean. The Old Ones remembered me.

I opened my eyes again and showed Athos their fathomless depths.

“No,” he said pensively, as his own gaze burned itself deeply inside my souls, “there’s nothing little about you, Aramis.” 

“Do you wish there to be discord between us, Athos?”

He ducked his head and brushed his lips against mine once again.

“It is my nature, Aramis.”

“ _My_ nature is that of Simara.”

“No. You are a creature of duality.”

“That is because I’ve learned from humans.”

“Humans are gone!”

“And a last spark of them lives on in us. If you extinguish that, all that we’re left with are gods and demons.”

“I’d never thought I’d live to see the day when you champion humanity, Aramis,” he said, and his voice, vibrant and mellifluous still, sounded much more like that of the comte de La Fère than that of the God of Discord.

“They had their uses,” I admitted. “They knew how to reconcile irreconcilable aspects and be creatures of malleability and change – unlike Titans or, indeed, gods.”

“Duplicity and hypocrisy, you mean. They lied to themselves as often as they lied to each other.”

I smiled, relieved to hear the jagged edge of exasperation in his voice. Gods didn’t sound like that. 

“You don’t have to embrace this particular aspect of human nature.”

“You mean I should leave that to you, don’t you, Aramis?” He kissed me now, lips warm and gentle, and I liked the note of humour in his words. Gods didn’t do humour either, unless it involved some shenanigans with animal transformations and a human coming to a bitter – and often sticky – end. Oh, how it made them laugh! 

“If that’s how you want to put it,” I said. “But you, Athos, you are a demigod among men and a demigod among gods: nobler and greater than both.”

 Athos’ hips pressed down on me, hard, as he let go of my arms and tangled his fingers in my hair instead. My blood melted. Rage that I had kept frozen beneath the layers of ice broke its dam and drove out my fangs that snagged at Athos’ lips. He hissed and thrust his pelvis into my groin, grinding his hot cock against mine through the layers of fabric.

His armour had faded, leaving him clad in his human clothes, and I hitched up his shirt and shoved my hand into his pants from behind, digging my fingers into the firm flesh of his arse. Already, heady vapours of heat were coiling around us. Even though we were in a hammam, surely no-one had turned on the steam? I looked around in momentary bewilderment, almost expecting to spot Grimley’s smirk somewhere in the misty haze.

“What is it?” Athos mouthed against my cheekbone.

I dragged my teeth over the ligaments of his neck.

“Always the baths, Athos,” I pushed my hand deeper into his pants and squeezed. “Do you remember Varna?”

His eyes were ebony black, the fires of Troy had faded. “I remember everything.”

“We sealed our covenant there." 

He groaned and his head dropped on my shoulder. His cock was ramrod hard, pressing into me, and that magnificent body of his that I had worshipped countless times over the centuries was mine once again tonight. Once upon a time, I had lost him to the cold embrace of the waters. I would not lose him to Olympian powers.

His mouth scalded mine as he poured all that passion that burned deep within him into a kiss. Passion: _passio_ , _suffering_. How apt was it named, that wildfire of the soul that devoured him while he watched the world end.

His hand in my hair, on my neck, on the collar of my shirt, and he tore it off me, stripping me with deft hands, and then he sank down to his knees like a penitent and sucked my cock deep into his throat. The exquisite heat of his mouth enveloped me and I thrust up, letting him claim me with each swirl of his tongue. My beautiful Olympian godling, he was drinking himself into a stupor on Discordian power, like he had drunk himself into a stupor on wine, and I was determined not to let him slip away from me. My cock ached as his mouth tightened around it.

With my hand in his hair, I pulled his head up and slid down from the bench to kneel on the marble tiles with him. Athos was panting, his eyes wide, his lips parted and glistening, and I kissed him, hurting his lips with my fangs, tasting the blood that pearled from the small wounds.

“Drink from me,” Athos’ voice was hoarse with lust. “Take my blood.”

“Not yet.” I undid the last few buttons of his shirt and pulled it off him. His trousers were unzipped already and his cock rose huge and majestic towards me. Athos curled his fingers around it and stroked himself, watching my face.

“You’re hungry, Aramis,” he said. “Take it. Take everything.”

My own cock twitched and slapped against my stomach at his words. Athos groaned, slung his arm around my waist and slammed our bodies together, biting down on my mouth again. “Do you think the water in that pool is clean?” Athos muttered into the kiss.

“I’m convinced Marie made sure of that. The nymph wouldn’t tolerate contaminated water in her house.”

In one smooth movement, he stood, pulling me up in his arms, and in the next moment, we were both sinking into the marble basin let into the floor of the hammam. The water was cold against our heated skin and I gasped, but Athos’ body was like a furnace against mine.

“The first time we bathed together,” he said, almost conversationally. “I was afraid to touch you. You were a wildling, my beautiful boy, and it was agony – waiting for you to come to me.”

“And then I did.”

“And then you did. And I never want to lose you again.” He tilted his head, baring his neck to me. My fangs tingled, yet I resisted.

“Don’t go locking yourself up in caves then,” I said.

Athos snorted with laughter.

“Is that all?”

“Don’t fuck your stepmother.”

“I promise.”

“I will rip her head off.”

“Aramis!” He pressed me against the tiles and kissed me. “I love you.”

“Turn around.” I broke the kiss and pressed my hand to his chest. He obeyed, clutched the ridge of the basin with both hands and rose to his feet, presenting his arse to me. I opened him up with my hands, dug my thumbs into his cleft and slid my tongue from his balls to his arsehole.

“Oh, fuck!” His thighs began to tremble, and I licked him again, drilling the tip of my tongue inside him, opening him for me, licking and sucking his heated flesh until a stream of curses spilled over his lips. My hand slipped between his legs and I gripped his cock, jerking him off in time of the thrusts of my tongue. His head bent, his back arched, Athos was panting, pushing back against me, desperate to be taken and filled. I pulled back my head and replaced my tongue with my thumb, twisting it inside him, shoving in another finger, and another, and still he wanted more. He had come to me a god, and he had become a man for me. Lightheaded with desire, I clambered to my feet and dragged my cock through the cleft of his arse. “Please, Aramis,” Athos whispered. I groaned, unable to hold back any longer, and pushed past the tight, slick ring into the heat of his body.

Athos thrust back, taking me in in one go, reached around and yanked me down by my hair. 

“Drink!” he ordered me in a low growl.

My fangs sank into his skin, his tissue and muscles, pierced his artery and I gulped down the hot, potent ichor that was the essence of my god. He was fucking himself on me, holding me in place by my hair, claiming me as his as he gave himself so completely to me. His blood poured in an incessant torrent into my mouth, more sacred to me than the blood of Christ. At last, he let go of me, and I staggered upright, clinging to his hips with both hands, and saw my cock bury itself deep in Athos’ arse with a long, desperate thrust of my hips. He cried out as I slammed him into the edge of the pool, and the air was knocked out of me with the forcefulness of our fuck. His blood dripped from my chin onto his back, a long rivulet trailed down his spine. I leaned in to lick it off, and Athos forced his back into a deeper arch, changing the angle of my thrusts and clenching down on my cock.

“Fuck!” I moaned, helpless against the orgasm that was rolling over me, erupting deep inside my groin and driving me into him. Athos’ body clamped down on me so hard I almost passed out, and a stream of profanities and declarations spilled from his lips, followed by a pained groan. “ _Aramis_!” His shoulders were shaking as his muscle suddenly relaxed and we both sank into the water. Athos rolled and turned around and tugged me close, tucking me in against his chest, where I curled up, half-sitting in his lap.

“Discord has no power over you, huh?” Athos murmured, stroking my hair. “Except the power to enrage you and undo you, kitten.”

“I kept my rage in check.” I raised my face from where it was burrowed in his chest and licked across the wound in his neck.

“Your self-control is outstanding. I’m proud of you,” he purred.

“Hm.” For a while, I was content to press my lips to the side of his neck. “Don’t think I don’t know why,” I whispered into his sweat-soaked hair eventually. “Your grief and trauma overwhelm you. It’s easier being a god who knows only one thing and strives for one thing only.”

His blood gave a powerful throb. “You’re so clever, chyortik.”

“Yes,” I said quietly. “I have learned a lot. I will not lose you, Athos. Discord will not defeat us this time.”

A tremor ran through his body, as if the memory of his sister had suddenly assaulted him. I clutched his arm with desperate fingers and struck while the iron was still hot: “Be careful, Athos. For both our sake. Don’t let Olympus take you, not after all this time. You have resisted its pull for millennia, don’t give in to it now that it’s gone.”

He murmured something unintelligible. His arms around me tightened. The pull of his blood was strong, I could feel it. As for me, I recognised the heady lure of battle as I was riding out against Olympus; and the more I fought, the more powerful War would become. If I had to become a pacifist to overcome Discord and War, so be it. I would not let them conquer Athos. I would let Death claim us rather than watch Olympus stand victorious.

*******

When first he had sunk into the darkness, the veil parted before his eyes and a green hand had cradled his entire body. He had swung in it like in a hammock. He had been weightless and voiceless and he had felt no pain. He had stood upon the top of a pyramid underneath Ra’s mighty gaze, and his heart had been weighed against a feather. Anubis smiled at him, his jackal snout sniffing at his curls. He had passed; and his voice had been given back to him.

“But I am not a true Egyptian,” were Antinous the God’s first words.

He had become. Antinous-Osiris. They praised him in Antinoopolis. They sang hymns to him in Bithynion and Mantineria. The votive offerings were burned upon his altar. He had often wished then that he could taste them, as he had wished to taste the lips of his Emperor once more. And the kiss of his God. Not the one who had resurrected him from the bed of the Nile, but the one who had in the kindness of his heart put him there in the first place.

They called him Antinous the Beautiful, Antinous the Intercessor, Antinous of the Flowering Heart. He who had died a man and had been reborn a god.

When did he see his Emperor again? He could no longer recall. For a time, he had come to live in the roots of a cypress tree. Stabbing upwards into the cerulean skies over Latium, over the sprawling gardens of Tivoli. _Make me tall, taller than my obelisks, make me an eagle, make me a star._ And Hadrian did. He had made Antinous a star: it lived within the constellation of Aquila, the Eagle. He had remembered his God had ever been wary of eagles.

“Be careful they do not carry you off, my fuzzy little caterpillar.”

How strange it was to have memories when you were a tree.

Another time, he had come to live inside a tulip in a garden. He looked up from the earthen bed upon his own marbled face and felt a sense of belonging like he had not attained in quite some time. Where was a god to go when he faded from memory? Where did Hadrian go once centuries of delirium blended into millennia? His Emperor too had been an eagle, carrying him away. Away, away, like ashes in the wind. But into the garden of the one who Still Remembered, there, he could be happy, as a flower, as a drop of rain, as a ray of sunshine on a blade of grass.

They had loved him for a while, and then they had forgotten him.

But then, strings tugged from a distance and stirred his soul. A number of voices saying his name. Saying “Antinous” like a secret, like a prayer, like a delicate thing to be awed at and spoken of in hushed tones. A multitude of quills, scribbling, scribbling, secret letters, _sub rosa_ , speedily wrote the General. “Antinous” whispered the letters, and the General’s lips too they echoed his name, “Antinous!”

_Make haste, make haste, only tell no one of what I order you to do._

His soul trembled, awake with longing. He was a cypress tree. An olive tree. He was the crumbled rocks of Rocca Bruna. The still water of the Canopus. He clung desperately to Hadrian’s garden. _Do not take me from here! I know no other home!_ he cried. But the General could not hear him.

So sunk the Star of Antinous. He could not feel his God from under the water. Sinking, sinking to the bottom of the sea, far deeper than he ever had to sink into the Nile. He wasn’t afraid of the water. There was only thing he feared: to be so far from the one who Remembered him.

Suddenly, a flicker of light, and the veil lifting from his eyes again. He heard the voice summoning him, while flailing like a newborn babe.

“Antinous, come out!” called the voice.

His body could barely move, still bound up in numerous strips of linen, the cloth around his face threatened to suffocate him as he clawed at it with stiff fingers.

“Take off the grave clothes, and let him go,” spoke the same voice.

“Is he seriously just going to keep quoting himself for the rest of the Apocalypse?” another man said.

The words were foreign to him, but he knew that voice well. The cloth parted from Antinous’ face and he gasped for air as a solitary word fell from his lips.

“ _Domine_!”

 


	10. Menoetius

**Belle-Île, France, winter 2017**

This is the Island of Beauty. It lies in the Gulf of Morbihan, exposed to the ferocious kisses of wind and waves that break against her rocks. Driven from their home in the forests of Brocéliande, fairies had wept here, and from their tears the gulf was born. They had thrown their garlands into the water, and from the flowers the islands had formed. The garland of the fairy queen turned into the largest and most succulent of all: and they had called it Belle-Île. Before she left, Marion had danced across the island, paying tribute to her sisters of old. The bodies of men who got caught up in the deadly roundelay rolled into the waters. They floated in the waves, until long fingers reached up and pulled them down, down, all the way to the kingdom of the Princess Dahut.

The Princess Dahut had been the betrothed of Ocean while she lived on Earth. Each night, she came out to the beach and combed her golden hair, and she sang a song for her intended:

_Ocean, beautiful Ocean blue, roll me on the sand, I am thy betrothed,_

_Ocean, beautiful Ocean blue._

_I was born on the sea, amidst the waves and the foam, when I was a child_

_I played with thee._

_Ocean, beautiful Ocean blue, roll me on the sand, I am thy betrothed,_

_Ocean, beautiful Ocean blue._

_Ocean, who decides which boats and men shall return, give to me the wrecks_

_of sumptuous ships and their riches, gold, and treasures._

_Bring to my city handsome sailors that I may look upon._

_Do not be jealous, I will return them to thee one after the other._

_Ocean, beautiful Ocean blue, roll me on the sand, I am thy betrothed,_

_Ocean, beautiful Ocean blue._

Each day, the Princess Dahut had a new betrothed: sailors who came into the port of the city of Ys and whom she took to her bed. She put a black mask on her affianced one’s face, and when the song of the meadowlark sounded in the morning hour, the mask tightened around the new consort’s throat until he breathed no more. His body was thrown to Ocean in the Bay of the Dead, where the souls of the deceased wait for the death ship to carry them to the other side.

A stranger arrived in the city of Ys one day. Dressed in red like a cardinal, with hands that were long and slim and with nails pointed and curved. Even though Dahut smiled at him, he kept aloof. Until one night the long fingers, the pointed nails threaded through the Princess’ golden hair, and he whispered in her ears. He whispered words that sent the daughter to her father the King when he lay asleep, and she took the key from him that protected the city of Ys, and the waves of the Ocean came crashing down over the dykes and ramparts: and the king pushed his daughter into the sea to appease her wrathful betrothed.

And so was drowned the city of Ys, which was the most beautiful one in the world. So beautiful that the splendid Roman town of Lutetia was formed in its image: _Par Ys_ , like Ys. One day, when Paris will be engulfed by waters, the city of Ys will rise again.

In Ocean’s realm, the Princess Dahut welcomes the bodies of drowned men into her sunken kingdom. They float through the streets, they slip through the ancient gates like fish, they dance with the princess in the throne room and on the ramparts. When the sea is quiet, when the winds sleep, when the moon pours her silver light over the inky waters of the Ocean, the chime of the church bells of Ys rises to the surface and echoes through the night.

The sunken city of Ys was two hundred kilometres away from the Gulf of Morbihan, but the fingers of Ocean’s daughters were long and nimble: they had tingled at the arrival of the pretty Divus, they had reached out for him as he sank deeper and deeper into the abyss, and they pulled him to their bosom.

The wild morgens of the Bretagne entrusted the Divus to the care of the Princess Dahut, who cradled him gently in her arms, like she had cradled the infants of the House of Rohan. The children of men had floated in the waters side by side with drowned sailors, and now that the time had come to honour the ancient pact with the House of Rohan, they remembered. The waters remembered their daughter who had clawed her way onto land and who had sent humans into Ocean’s domains again: humans whose bones were picked clean by lobsters and fish and whose souls repopulated the sunken city of Ys. The morgens had played with the remains of the pretty Divus, until there was no spark left in him and until his soul was as desiccated as his body. He had not loved them. He had not loved the depth. His face turned towards the sun, towards the scorching light and feral winds that swept over the surface. They gave him up gladly, for they had been given opulent gifts, and the flesh and blood of humans had fertilised the bottom of the sea. The morgens released what they had taken.

***

The room where we had installed Antinous for the time being smelled vaguely of rot and my eyes easily isolated an old, withered bouquet of roses on the console that was responsible for the permeating smell of death.  The windows let in bright rays of merciless sunshine cluing me into the fact that they had been uncovered since last I had been there.

He was no longer asleep, but he still sat curled up on the bed, with his knees drawn up to his chin and his arms loosely cradling his own ankles. 

“You turned the curtain into a toga,” I said, almost apologetically.

“Someone had turned this toga into window hangings,” he had responded, lifting his heavy eyelids and fixing me with his doelike gaze.

I approached the bed, my hands desperately shoved into the deep pockets of my slacks.  How was I to even attempt having this conversation?  “I’m so sorry, caterpillar,” I began.  It seemed as good a place as any. “This wasn’t exactly the reunion I had hoped to have with you one day.”

He smiled at me, a soft smile that had been as guileless and as alluring as when he had been no more than a Bithynian urchin.  “Still not a butterfly then?” he teased.  “And here you have traveled so far to hatch me from my cocoon.  How disappointing for you.”

My hands itched to touch him.  “Tinou..,” I attempted.  “You were always more butterfly than caterpillar.”

He scooted down the bed and climbed up to his knees upon the mattress.  All I had to do was remove my hand from my pocket and let my fingers sink into the thick canopy of curls framing his head like a pagan halo.

“What sort of afterlife is this, Domine?”

“The sort that is right before the final sleep, I imagine,” I replied.

“Ah,” he cocked his head to the side, contemplating me with a fond look, “you do look tired, Domine.”

He was the one who reached for me first, his fingers carding through the shortly cropped curls at the nape of my neck, then moving through the longer strands up top, and finally combing through the ticket of my beard with a look of wide-eyed wonder.

“You look exactly the same,” he said.  “Only you’re attired so…” He paused, looking judgmentally at the buttons of my shirt and finally my slacks.

I drew my hands out and untied the bow that held the curtain in place.  It dropped around him in a pool of burgundy.  The color had suited him.

“This is how I remember you,” I said, letting my hand cup his dimpled chin, my thumb pressing against the plump sinfulness of his succulent lower lip.  “Hadrian,” I spoke past the lump in my throat, “he wanted the world to remember you forever.”

“And did it?” his breath tickled the pad of my thumb.

“I did,” I replied. “I remember everything, Antinous.” His body slid up against mine, his arms wrapped around my neck the same way they did on the bank of the Nile when last I held him. Fearless, determined.  “Forgive me,” I exhaled and closed my eyes.  “Forgive me for everything I’ve done to you.  Including this.”

My wild Bithynian flower.  His eyelids still wilted like petals when you kissed his lips.

***

The resurrected body of Antinous the God lay soaked in perspiration in the arms of the God of Discord.  His head lulled softly to the side, jaw slackening to let his lush lips drop open and receive Discord’s probing tongue in a languid exploration. A low current of electricity thrummed through him, rising from the place where their bodies were still joined and escaping into a moan.

“I loved you, Tinou,” Athos whispered against the damp curls, lips pressed against the warm temple that throbbed with a renewed pulse. “I never told you while you were alive, but I did.”

Antinous closed his eyes, bathed in the warmth of the declaration and soft caresses that enveloped him like a velvet shroud.  Discord’s beard scratched benevolently across the sensitive skin of his neck, sending shivers down through his splayed limbs. Oh, he had missed having a body, even if it was never truly his to possess before.

“Did you see him again?” Athos whispered.  “Hadrian?”

White clouds in a cerulean sky.  An eagle circling overhead above the still waters of the Canopus pond.  Fish swimming in the deep currents.

“I did,” Antinous responded, turning into the strong embrace.  “We were together for… I cannot express it, Domine.  There are no words in the human tongue to say.  An instant, an eternity?  We had been gods together and it had been… sublime.”  

A warm embrace on a foggy morning.  A deer running through the woods at dawn.  The moon rising over the hills.  Sun dappled fields of lavender.

“And then what happened?” Athos asked.

“We were forgotten,” Antinous replied.

“You weren’t,” Athos shook his head, letting his lips kiss the tanned shoulder that was still as round and supple and warm as the last time he had touched it.  “The world still remembers one of the greatest love stories ever told.”

“By whom?” Antinous smiled.

The God of Discord did not reply, he simply rolled them over and hovered over the Bithynian Divus on his elbows.

“Get up, get dressed,” Athos commanded and pushed himself off the mattress.

Antinous reached for the rumpled duvet and used it to wipe the traces of their lovemaking off his body.  “Where are we going, Domine?”

“There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

“Whom?”

Athos had slipped back into his clothes and adjusted his collar, buttoning up in front of the mirror over the console.  His hands passed through his rumpled curls, determined to battle them down into some semblance of presentability.  

“Domine?”

The God of Discord was still, his eyes fixed upon the vase on the console where a bouquet of fresh red roses gave off a seductive aroma.  He reached out and touched his fingers to the resurrected petals.  A soft breeze wafted through the room making the blooming buds tremble.

“Athos?”

“Huh?”

“You said there was someone you wanted me to meet?”

Athos turned and beheld his companion robed in the burgundy folds of the reclaimed curtain.  It fell off his shoulder, exposing a single, wide plane of his chest.  

“Pygmalion,” he replied with a private smile.

They walked down the corridor into the parlor where a steaming pot of tea presided over a table of poorly eaten fruits and pastries.  A man and a woman sat closely, their heads almost touching in intense conversation.  At their entry, the woman looked up, her small, tanned hand pressed against her bosom.

“Yeshua!  It’s nice to see you have not lost your touch while you have been so out of practice!” she exclaimed in a language the Divus knew he had heard before in the time of Hadrian.

“Madam,” Athos bowed curtly towards the unknown female entity.  “I wanted Antinous to meet the man who had reawakened him from his eternal sleep.”

The man who had been addressed as Yeshua rose slowly from his seat and turned to face them with a look of profound wonder upon his face.  His beard, Antinous noted, had been rather pleasantly shaped, despite his somewhat informal and bizarre attire that seemed quite out of place in this dwelling even to him, who knew nothing of the world he’d been reborn into.

“ _Salve_ ,” Antinous said.

“Um… hey,” Jesus Christ responded with a shy smile.

***

Battered by wind and water, heavy with the weight of centuries, built by a vampire and a Titan, the Citadelle Vauban was our Avalon: the island of fae, lost to humans, vanishing in the ocean foam. When Vlad and I had come here, we knew that the old gods must be paid in order to offer us protection and shelter. Ask, and you will be granted. Take, if you need. And pay what you’re due.

The long corridors and silent, distinguished rooms unfurled before and around us like gates to a parallel universe as we took our new residence in possession. Beneath my feet, deep under the rock, I felt the Ocean roar, a comforting weight, like a beloved’s body sliding against me at night, heavy and warm with sleep. It had been my brother-ancestor François of Rohan who had erected the first fort on the island in the 16th century, and it had been I who had given Aramis, and through him Nicolas Fouquet, the idea to fortify the place one hundred years later. After humanity had perished, the hotel and museum remained untouched; even the bust of M. Fouquet stood next to the reception desk unharmed, staring with unmoving stone eyes at the fountain that trickled in the centre of the lobby. Sweet water that sprang from rock suspended in the middle of the sea: I dipped my fingers into as if I were Aramis and the fountain was a holy water stoup in a church, and carried them to my lips.

The god and demon had disappeared from my sight. I had a pretty good idea where Athos had gone – one glance at the pretty Divus, and his Olympian blood had boiled; he had to possess the boy, for he was Discord, Son of Zeus, and the nature of gods is unyielding and eternal. Aramis knew it too. I saw those black eyes kindle with the flame I knew so well, and a shiver of pleasure ran down my spine, like a trickle of cool water.

We glided through the citadel like ghosts, each one of us hovering just out of sight of the others. Hera with her regal poise and Olympian smirk sat at the bar in the lounge like a boozy version of Lady Havisham. Jesus paced the courtyard, disappearing and re-emerging among the ramparts, in the barracks, the powder magazine, and the prison, where the donkey and the sheep had been installed. Mary, her usually so industrious hands still for the moment, sat calm and serene like a statue of herself on the terrace, her hair windswept and her eyes fixed upon the horizon. Vlad was busy with his bees, who had awakened from their slumber and buzzed angrily and confusedly at the staring eye of the unmoving Sun. Between us, crisscrossing the Citadel like a spider building its web, was Grimley with a tray in his hands.

A shadow moved, silent and black like the abyss of the sea. Aramis.

“Where are you off to, chéri?” I addressed him. "Stay. We need to talk. You must be sure of what you have to do."

He stopped. His head swivelled slowly towards me, as if his neck were attached to his body on rusty hinges.

“What is Vlad doing?”

“Keeping bees.”

“In the basement?”

I startled. I hadn’t noticed Vlad leave his beehives and sneak back into the building. As far as I was aware, Dracula’s ability to turn into mist was nothing but a rumour, but you never knew with those bloodsucking types; they tended to pick up new skills as they went along, depending on their diet. The current situation being what it was, he well might have picked up a shapeshifter.

“Probably not in the basement.”

“I didn’t think so.” Aramis nodded and his body tensed as if he was about to continue on his prowl.

“Aramis!”

“Marie,” he said courteously. “How can I help?”

“Do you remember,” I said as I approached him slowly and put a hand on his arm. It was as solid and firm though his layers of fine clothes as I remembered it: silk hiding steel, some things never changed. I smiled. “Do you remember what we once discussed, in our Parisian days? The Pandora’s box of secrets that’s better left unopened?”

“Do you think I can’t cope with whatever it is Vlad is pottering with?”

“No.” I squeezed his arm and smiled. “I’m sure you can. But – can Athos?”

He blinked.

“Or would you keep it from him?”

“No.” He took a step back from the stairs leading to the basement and my hand dropped from his arm. I could see the flash of his teeth between lips that were pale with suppressed fury. For the span of a few heartbeats, we stared at each other, and then he was suddenly standing a few paces away from me. I had barely seen him move. "There are only so many secrets I'm willing to keep from Athos."

“Where are you going?”

“To the museum.” And with those words, he was gone. I saw him later – or I thought I did, for twilight had crept over the citadel and a wall of fog was rolling towards us over the mercurial waters, turning shapes into shadows. A tall, slim figure, slinking down a candle-lit corridor, his black robe swirling around him. He must have pilfered the Jesuit section in the museum, where he found his old vestments. I thought at the time that I caught a glimmer of the General’s ring on his finger as he passed under a sconce, but it was probably just my imagination, for that ring had never been part of the exhibition.

When we had torn Athos’ former lover from the embrace of the waters, I should have known that there was only one way it would play out. Blood had been spilled upon the ancient rock of Belle-Île for centuries: the blood of humans; the blood that the Ancient Ones craved. The Divus had been human once, his blood, like that of Jesus and Athos, was a blend of the sacred and the profane. The sacrifice had been perfect: he had been fucked and he had been killed on ancient pagan soil, and no god nor Titan would now dare touch us in our sanctuary.

***

_I am nothing but ash in the wind, and yet you are not rid of me.  Brave little brother, you’re going to have to become a better liar before it’s all over._

“No!” I opened my eyes, Eris’ voice still ringing in my ears.   _I am nothing but ash in the wind… in the wind… the wind._

It had not been a dream, for I have not had dreams in some time, yet I struggled to attach a different label to this visitation.  I emitted a soft groan and attempted to roll off the bed, only to find my body weighed down.

“Hush, my beautiful boy, everything’s well.” Long fingers carded through my hair and my nostrils filled with a fragrant scent of petals and sandalwood. One of Hera’s long gazelle legs was slotted in between my own, her arm supported her regal head, delicately balanced upon that stately neck that was almost too birdlike to belong on a woman’s body.  

“Madam,” I choked out, my limbs uncomfortably heavy beneath hers.

“ _Hera_ ,” she breathed against my lips.

“Hera,” I frowned.  “You should not be here.”

“Where should I be?” she asked, her fingers absentmindedly traversing the expanse of my chest.  I attempted to halt their wandering path by taking her hand into my own.  “Why do you resist me? We could be a great team together.”

“You’ve played many a cruel joke on me over the years, but even you must feel in your heart this isn’t right.”  I shifted and attempted to rise.  Her body slid up against mine like a shimmering veil.

“What about it isn’t right?” She looked at me with the adolescent pout of a sheltered maid, not with the wrath of the Queen of the Gods. “We are both Olympian Gods.  I am widowed and you are unwed. Nothing impedes this.”

“But Aramis and I…”

“What?”

 _Brave little brother,_ Eris was laughing at me again.   _You’re going to have to become a better liar before it’s all over._

“We’ve made certain vows to each other,” I attempted.

“What kind of vows?”  

Her hand was dangerously close to my cock and three thousand years of conditioning were about to kick into overdrive.  I had to choose vows that she would instinctively comprehend.  

“We’re betrothed,” I exhaled.

Hera’s eyes widened. “Darling, that’s wonderful!” she declared with genuine glee.  Her hand slid off my thigh and I breathed easier.  “When will you be making it official?”

“Soon,” I lied.  “As soon as this apocalypse is over.  I think you will agree now isn’t exactly the high time for romance.”

“What does marriage have to do with romance?” she asked, cocking her head to the side.

“Right,” I muttered, moving slowly off the bed.  “Well, you certainly have a unique perspective on things, as the Goddess of Marriage,” I babbled.  “But I shall go find him and we’ll talk about it.  Sounds fair?”

“I shall shower Aramis in bridal gifts,” Hera declared with a dreamy look in her eyes.  “Do demons pay dowries?  Oh well, no matter, I am sure Vlad can procure cheese and honey for his nephew’s nuptials.”

“It’s the other way around,” I stammered, as my mind reeled between panic and the ridiculous.  “Vlad is Aramis’ nephew.”

“Details, darling,” Hera said with unabated delight as I steadily backed out of the room and hastened to close the door behind me.  And then I let my head fall backwards against it.

“Father, why have you abandoned me,” I muttered.  

I briefly wondered where the devil Aramis had actually gotten himself off to and why I was forced to awaken with my stepmother at my side instead of him.  I remembered the prior night but vaguely, flashes of finding a secluded cellar and a bottle of Raku.  Seeing Antinous again had put me in the mood for something Turkish, and introducing him to Christ Almighty put me in the mood of downing the entire bloody thing.  He really wasn’t the bad sort, Yeshua, he took care of his flock, he wouldn’t bugger off at the first sign of trouble like his shitbird of a father, he didn’t force himself upon women or children as far as I could tell.  Tinou would be better off with him, I had decided.  And then I got stupendously drunk.

_Just as he had been better off with Hadrian._

“Fuck _off_ ,” I told the ghost of Eris in my head.  “He was happy with Hadrian.  His life _meant_ something.  It still does.”

_You’re getting better at it, little brother.  The lying._

“ _Gods,_ you’re a bitch,” I moaned into my own fist.  She wasn’t real.  “You’re not real,” I told the voice in my head. “Antinous will be fine, you’ll see,” I informed myself.  I’ll see. I could see right then, there was no reason for waiting.  My feet propelled me rapidly towards that room where the Divus and I had recently coupled, lost in a haze of past memories.  “He’s all right,” I said to myself.

_Whom are you trying to convince? Me or yourself?_

“He’s fine,” I reiterated and softly knocked on his door.  There was no answer, prompting me to knock again, a bit louder.  The door stared in silence back at me.  “He’s fine,” I repeated my mantra, twisting the door handle to let myself in.  

The flowers in the vase stood dry and wilted again and my heart sank.  “Tinou?”  A single foot, as white and still as a slab of marble peeked out from behind the thick, wooden frame of the bed.  “Tinou!” I lunged forward, dropping to my knees on the floor next to his prone body.  

Cold.  Exsanguinated.  I had witnessed enough corpses with this look about them to easily recognize the signs.

I raised my eyes to the heavens and my sight went black.  “ _Aramis_!” I screamed.  I pulled the lifeless body into my lap and cradled the heavy head in my arms. His curls spilled over the crook of my elbow.  Blue lips that only a day ago were red with life and passion.  How was it possible that he lay here in my arms, dead _again_ , and by my own doing?  For I knew without doubt that when I had thrust my cock in him, I may as well have plunged Aramis’ fangs into his neck myself.  I blinked and two trails of tears poured down my cheeks and dripped onto my old lover’s bruise-tinted lips.

“No… please, not this…” I whispered.

“Which one of your vampires did this?”

It had not even occurred to me that it may have been Vlad.  I looked over my shoulder at Christ’s somber and rather judgmental face.

“Fix him,” I said.

“And drag him through the horrors of resurrection, _again_?” Yeshua taunted.  “What if he were to return a zombie?  Or a demon revenant, like your lover who did this to him?”

“Antinous wasn’t human anymore,” I replied through tears that stung and choked me.  I had no chance to weep for him last time.  This time, there was no one here to stop me, and Jesus had seen me weep before.  “He had returned a God.  Aramis should not have been able to kill him.”

“Perhaps Aramis becomes what he eats.   How often has he been feeding on you of late?” Christ smirked.  Smugness was unbecoming on him.

“Just once since Lucerne,” I sighed.

“Lucerne,” Yeshua echoed and something in his countenance shifted.  Then he swore under his breath in one of the languages of his wandering tribe.

“What it is?” I asked, still clutching Tinou’s corpse in my arms.

“You might not be solely responsible for this,” Jesus said, quietly settling down on the floor next to me.  “I too let him drink from me in Lucerne.”

“Where _is_ he?” I asked with growing anguish.

“I can fix this,” Jesus said, placing his hands over mine where they rested on Antinous’ lifeless shoulders. “But you must fix the two of you.  The world has fallen apart as it is.  Do not add to the chaos by letting the one beautiful thing you had fought so hard for spoil and rot along with it.  Remember the man you were before you met your demon?”  I nodded silently. “Do not become that man again.”

My eyes burned and bile rose up from a stone lodged deep within my belly.  I was being dragged to the bottom of the sea again by invisible tentacles.  “Please, bring him back,” I begged in a hollow voice.  “And then take him, and keep him safe from me.   _Please_.”

“I am the resurrection and the life,” Jesus whispered, his hand passing in a benediction over my forehead.  “Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.”  He repeated the gesture over the Bithynian boy’s forehead and, before my eyes, blue lips flushed pink again.  The dried flowers in the vase stirred with life.  “Leave him and go,” spake Christ and I fled the room as if the Furies were after me.

***

_My Ganymede. You flee from me, but if I must turn myself into an eagle as my Father once did, I will swoop down upon you and carry you off in my talons yet. I will find you by Ariadne’s thread with which you have bound us and I will tell you my name, my true name._

There was no place he could hide from me.  Surely, he had not left the island, surrounded as we were by the realm of the Oceanids on all sides.  All my senses were keened into one purpose: to pursue my prey. A flutter of wings above my head alerted me that my desperate steps had been followed.

“Sophia,” I extended my fist and her talons coiled around my fingers.  “Do you know where he went?”  My owl’s physiognomy was as smug as my Grigori’s.  “Clever girl.”

I turned the corner, alighting down the stairs leading to the basement.  “Vlad!” I called out, not wishing to interrupt whatever it was he did down here.  “I need a horse,” I told Dracula before he even had the chance to open his mouth to say anything friendly.  “I am certain you must have had the foresight to bring some with you.”

“Tatic,” Vlad bowed and gestured for me to follow him.  “You look pale.  Have you not eaten?”

“Not as well as you,” I noted, eyeing the healthy flush of his cheeks.  “Vlad.” I halted my steps.  Before I ventured down a path I could not turn from, I had to know for sure.  “Tell me whom you’ve been eating.”

“Is it terribly important, Tatic?”

“It is today.” He opened his mouth to speak but I held up my hand.  “Swear to me.  Give me your word as a Prince and voivode of Wallachia.  I want the word of a gentleman from you, Vlad.”

“I have never spoken anything other than the truth to you in my entire life, Tatic, I swear it.  I am not about to start prevaricating now at the End of Days.  Only… I do not think all of your companions would appreciate what I am about to tell you.”

“Go on,” I spoke breathlessly.

“Horses are not the only living creatures we brought to this citadel.  But I assure you, they came of their own volition.  In exchange for their… services… I give them protection from the Titans and provide for their mortal needs with food and clean water.”

I let out a deep sigh of relief.  “You have human prisoners.”

“Guests,” Vlad corrected me with a genteel smile.

“You mean snacks,” I retorted.

“Semantics, Tatic.  The horses are this way.”

“You did not touch the Divus?”

“Why would I do such a thing?  The Divus is your friend.”

I believed him.  By the gods, I believed him, which meant… _Aramis_.  Aramis, I had chased you before when you had broken my heart.  I had chased you before to save you from imagined death and to hunt you down and make you mine.  But I had never yet chased you in vengeance.

“Which one do you want?  Harker or Helsing?” Vlad asked pointing to two healthy-looking steeds with long, black manes.

“The fastest,” I replied.

“Take Harker,” Dracula smiled and began to saddle my mount himself.

I leapt onto the horse’s back, my feet quickly finding the stirrups and taking the bridle in hand.  The living beast between my thighs vibrated with power and potency in a way that no automobile ever could, regardless of the imaginary horses under the hood.  Sophia flew off my arm, her small brown body streaking across the skies like a guiding comet.  I gave the beast his head and prodded him onwards.

_I will find you and I will tell you my true name._


	11. Eos

**Locmaria, winter 2017**

Blackness lay around me like a velvet mantle. This was not the blackness of the grave; not the blackness of the earth that trickled into my eyes and my mouth, penetrated my skull and blinded me. It was the blackness of death: ancient and all-powerful, like myself. The cavern of Locmaria, whose winding caverns took me all the way into the bowels of the mystic rock that had soaked up the blood of men for centuries. The living rock emitted a faint glow, like a halo around the heads of Christian saints. Guided by its light, I weaved between ancient pillars of stone, the jagged and broken ruins of a pagan temple. Three hundred and fifty years ago, the grotto had caved after an explosion and buried Porthos in its fathomless depths. Today, I’d found my way into its heart once again. As I walked, crunching the bones of men and dogs underfoot that I had given to the gods of old, my gaze fell on a canine skull that grinned up at me from the ossuary. The sacrifice to Ares had not been in vain; I had called him and he had guided my arm.

Tonight, it was not the God of War whom I invoked.

Beneath the rabble, beneath the broken bones of century-old sacrifices, the rock of Belle-Île felt soft and organic, like soil. Like molten lava. It pulsated with life that was as old as Earth herself: eternal and indestructible, a power beyond human and divine control. But not beyond mine. Marie had made a pact with the Titan of the ocean, and it had been honoured. I’d returned the Divus to the Old Ones, and they had stirred as his blood seeped through stone. This was the only language they understood: the language of blood, and it was a language I spoke all too well. Zeus hadn’t been the ultimate sacrifice to the Titans: it was war that they craved, and War was what I would give them. I would throw the mantle of Discord into the gullet of Kronos and ask for nothing but for Athos in return. The grotto of Locmaria was the temple where the last sacrifice would be made, and once the rock was saturated with divine blood, once Gaia had drunk her fill, the Titans would be appeased.

I touched the ancient stone and it throbbed under my hand like a purring cat. It had grown from fairy garlands, in a sea of fairy tears, and the morgens of the Bretagne danced around it in the depth of the ocean. To this sacred ground I was summoning Gaia.

It was not the God of War whom I invoked. It was a power greater and more terrible than Ares could ever be.

A shimmer of light moved behind the broken pillars: the ignis fatuus of my life, approaching me as slow and inevitable as a tidal wave. I closed my eyes and took my knife between my teeth, smiling as I thought of the fairies who, exiled to the Atlantic Ocean, had danced here with men who’d driven them away from their ancient forests. Once upon a time, the morgens of Bretagne had rejoiced in the sacrifice I’d brought them wrapped in the dirty bandages of an Egyptian mummy. Today, the blood of the Divus had dripped onto the soil and rock of the Island of Beauty, as I resealed my covenant with this land.

A shudder ran through the rock beneath my feet and trickled upwards, along my spine, exploded in the back of my skull. The ignis fatuus flared up and in its centre, like a phoenix spreading its wings, appeared the silhouette of the God of Discord.

The earth quaked, rocks fell from the vaulted cavern and rolled to the ground, crushing bones to powder.

“You fool!” I hissed, tugging the cold steel from between my teeth. “You brought him back!”

“You killed him!” Athos was striding towards me like a warrior of ancient days. His breastplate shone golden and the flames of Troy burned in his eyes.

“I hate to remind you, but you killed him first.”

“Aramis!” His voice was thunderous as that of his father, but there was a note of anguish in it that I knew. I steeled myself against the spur that it sent into my heart. “He was just a boy.”

“So was I,” I said, “Once upon a time. And you fucked us both, Discord. For you are Discord, aren’t you?”

Through the soles of my feet, I felt Gaia move and breathe a fearsome, a gargantuan breath. I would have gladly screamed with rage: my plan had been foiled by the one person whom I couldn’t possibly tear to pieces.

His gaze dropped to my hand and he laughed, a short, harsh sound that echoed through the grotto. “Little chyortik,” he said, very softly. “Are you taking up arms against me?”

“Not at all,” I said and let the knife drop to the ground. “This was merely for reasons of nostalgia. I have memories of this place.”

“So have I,” he said, anger kindling again. “I died here. You killed me, and now you killed Antinous.” The last word was a hiss.

“For the first, I am sorry,” I said, and I was. “As to the boy,” I shrugged. “Have you not grasped this, Athos? That’s what Antinous _is_. He is the ultimate sacrifice, a plaything of the powerful: you moulded him into one.”

“Your jealousy is laughable.” He stood so close to me now, I could see his chest rise and fall and the mantle of Discord undulate around his shoulders and arms. “You ate Antinous, Aramis. You drank every last drop of his blood. And for what reason? Did you honestly think that I would abandon you and take up with him again?”

“You did,” I pointed out. “He was still dripping when I had him.”

“Not with the intention of keeping him!” Discord snarled.

The earth trembled again and we both swayed, all but staggering into each other. “Discord!” I exclaimed. “His blood could have protected all of us! Where is he now?”

“I gave him to Yeshua.”

“And what is he going to do with Antinous, pray tell?” I staggered back into the wall and braced myself against it, cutting my palm on the jagged stones. “He’s not an Olympian.”

Athos ignored that. “Did you really think I’d let you murder Antinous?” His face was white with fury, his teeth bared. I had rarely seen wrath take him over so completely. “You told me to trust you, Aramis. You assured me of your love and your devotion, and then you took what I loved!” For a brief moment, I knew that he was going to kill me in revenge, spill my blood for Antinous’, taking an eye for an eye like an ancient deity. A sword manifested in his hand: the weapon that had slayed countless Trojans was ready to pierce my heart.

“Go on,” I told him, my eyes locked with his. “This is why you came here, isn’t it? Revenge. You want to spill my blood like I spilled that of your lover.” A stab with the sword would not kill me, and my blood, saturated with the blood of the deities of three different pantheons, might induce the Titaness to parley.

“He’s not my lover,” Athos said in a low, dangerous voice. Around him, behind him, the vault shook. The Old Ones were angry.

“Tell it to them.” I indicated the vaulted grotto with a flourish of my hand. “I’m sure they’ll understand.”

“This is not about them, Aramis.” The edge of danger in Athos’ voice sliced through the air between us. “This is about us, you and me.”

“And Antinous. Apparently.”

The earth shook again, a deep grumble tore from her throat as the Titans marched towards us like the terracotta army of the ancient Chinese emperor. They had located us. The renewed sacrifice of the Divus had whetted the Old Ones’ appetites. His renewed resurrection had torn him from their grasp. Despite my best efforts, they were not coming to negotiate: they were coming to take what they considered theirs. The gods didn’t often relinquish what they took. Ocean’s daughters had returned Antinous to us freely once; the second time, he was stolen from them before they’d had their due.

I ground the palm of my hand harder against the wall, twisting and turning my wrist to open the wounds. The blood of the Divus coated the stone and the tremors subsided.

“You insist on making it about Antinous.” The edge of anger had turned into a note of disdain. “If not for your jealousy, none of this would’ve happened.” A smirk twisted those beautiful lips. “That’s quite a human weakness for such a powerful demon, don’t you think, little chyortik?”

“And as we know, the God of Discord is above human weaknesses.”

The tip of his sword rose to my chest and shoved the cross aside that hung from my neck. “I see you’ve found Yeshua again. Do you pray to him, Aramis?”

“I don’t pray,” I told him. “I have long ceased to pray.”

“Such hubris,” he whispered with a hypnotic purr at the back of this throat. “Do you really think you can destroy a god, Aramis?”

“I believe I did,” I hissed, as anger, so long suppressed, finally boiled to the surface. “More than once.”

The blood of the Divus had not sufficed to pacify mine. Discord was winning, taking us both over, and my fangs dropped. Above us, around us, the Earth roared.

“And you wish to do it again, is that it?” Athos laughed, and it was the Homeric laughter of the gods. “You cannot break my heart again, sweet flittermouse.”

“I don’t intend to break it, you fool!” I snarled, enraged beyond all measure. “I want to keep it.”

“It is yours Aramis!” he called, and the echo of his words soared up, flapping and thrashing against the vault like a trapped bird of prey. “It’s always been yours!”

“Don’t you see what’s happened to you?” I let go of the wall and gripped his vambrace instead. It was slick under my bloodstained palm. Around us, the cavern shook again, a hail of stones rained from the ceiling and ricocheted off Discord’s armour. “You are the God of Discord! You have picked up your sister’s mantle and you’re destroying us the way she once did!”

He laughed again, grabbed a fistful of my cassock and yanked me close. “Are you comparing me to Eris, Aramis? Do you realise how ridiculous that is?”

“You are an Olympian.” I let go of his wrist and pressed my palm against the wall instead.

“And your point is?”

“I will not watch you turn into your father.”

“Am I my father or my sister now?”

“Neither was exactly capable of love.”

“Incapable of love?” He raised his eyebrows mockingly. “What’s the fuss about Antinous then? If you don’t think I’m capable of loving him, all you object to is me fucking him, and, frankly, Aramis, you don’t have a leg to stand on in this particular battlefield.”

“I am not your Catamitus, Discord,” I informed him. “Nor will I ever be.”

“Did I ever ask you to be?”

“Do you deny that you think of me as your Ganymedes?”

“You are mine, Aramis,” he growled.

“Not like this. I will not be the beloved of an Olympian deity.”

“Are you rejecting me?”

“I am rejecting Discord.”

“I believe,” Athos smirked and loomed over me. “You are even now embracing discord, my sweet boy. You claim to reject Discord, and yet you summoned him the moment you sank your teeth into Antinous’ neck.”

I snarled and flashed my teeth at him, as the blood of the Divus thundered through my veins. With an almighty tug of my willpower, I reined in my wrath and subdued the boiling blood. Discord would not prevail. Again, a powerful tremor ran through the rocks and pushed us into each other’s arms. I slammed into the breastplate of Discord, while his arms closed around me in a powerful grip.

“You tore down the bulwarks of Belle-Île,” I spoke into the hot skin of his neck. “They crave the blood of Antinous.”

“Will mine do?” Athos tilted his head, baring his throat to me. “I’ll gladly spill it, if that’s what you wish.”

My fangs tore through his flesh with ease. The blood of Discord was spiced with fury and I swallowed three, four mouthfuls greedily, before the mist lifted and I remembered that Locmaria had to be appeased. A broken slab of stone became our altar, the ancient grotto became a temple of pagan sacrifice once again. The shudders receded, the earth lay becalmed. Olympian ichor ran through the grooves and into fissures of the rock, dripping into the greedy gullet of Earth. My veins swelled with Olympian nectar. Discord stood victorious. His armour vanished, it was no longer needed now that the battle was won.

A mare rode Athos in the cave of Locmaria, and as ever he made a delightful stallion. As I straddled him, his breath was hot and moist against my groin, and his tongue and mouth were devouring me with ravenous lust. Spread on his back on the stone slab, his naked body lean and strong, the lines of his arms and legs powerful, the skin warm and glowing with lingering Olympian fires: truly, he was a god, and I was powerless to prevent it.

For now, I had gone down on my knees, but it was he who worshipped me. Athos’ tongue was slick between my legs, his arm lay against my thigh like a giant serpent, fingers clutching at my waist; the other wrist pressed to my mouth. The skin there was unbroken yet. I licked over the pulse point in anticipation. I moaned with hunger for him: for it was the ichor of Discord I craved more than the blood of any other deity. I savoured this moment when we were at our most human: naked and sweating and panting with desire for each other, stripped of the divine and the diabolical. It was just us in the grotto, and we were consumed with lust and dizzy with hunger.

My hips jolted forward as Athos’ tongue bored itself filthily into my asshole. I swayed and he hummed against my skin and tightened his grip around my waist and hip. He licked a long stripe over my balls to my cock. “You taste good, Aramis,” he murmured, caressing my dick with parted lips and hot puffs of breath. “Come in my mouth,” he continued, watching me with half-lidded eyes. “Spill yourself into my mouth when I spill myself in yours.”

“Athos!” I groaned. That generous mouth parted in a lazy smile, his teeth flashed and his tongue flicked out and lapped across the tip of my cock.

“Yes, say my name,” he whispered. “My true name.” A sticky thread glistened between my cock and his mouth and he sucked it in and licked his lip with a dirty smile. “I can taste how close you are, my love. I want more of this. Give it to me.”

Against the hypnotic pull of his voice, I was powerless. I angled my hips and dragged the wet tip of my cock over his lips, watching him suck it in greedily. As I filled his mouth with slow deliberation, his hand snaked between my legs and he screwed two fingers into me. My eyes closed at the sensation of being filled; those measured rubs against the pleasure point inside me made sparks go off behind my eyes.

“Look at me,” Athos whispered. “Aramis. Look at me.”

I opened my eyes and gazed into his. They were dark with that hunger that I knew so well. The way he lay beneath me, letting me fuck his mouth, giving himself to me – I saw the man behind the god then. It was the man who had lain beneath me six hundred years ago, when we were learning to read each other’s bodies and learned the pleasures that we could give each other. So much time had passed since then; we had done so much to each other. Yet it was this simple act of getting sucked off by Athos that never failed to overwhelm me in its intimacy and intensity.

Sweat coated his forehead and chest, and I slid slickly back and forth as I rode him, shoving my cock deep into his throat while he finger-fucked me with long, slow thrusts.

“You’re beautiful,” I told him, and his eyes lit up in a smile that was impossible for his mouth to express. “With your lips stretched around my dick.” A soft groan vibrated in his throat and sent tremors all the way to my groin and up my spine. His fingers inside me twisted and I gasped, my hips jerked, and his mouth tightened around my cock, and then released it.

“Let me taste your cum,” Athos growled, pushing another finger in to stretch me for his cock. “Come for me, now!”

With another gasp, I let myself fall into the heat of his mouth. My panting mouth pressed against his wrist, and he rubbed it over my teeth again and again, choking under the harsh thrusts of my cock. And then, his skin broke, my fangs dug into his flesh, and we spilled into each other, moaning each other’s names.

He was so hard, his cock twitched against his stomach as I reached behind me to grope for it. I slid down his chest, dragging a wet trail behind me, and sank down on him, gasping as its length and girth pushed me open and filled me out. His pulse throbbed inside me, I felt it in the blood in my mouth and the dick in my arse. At last, it slipped all the way in and I sat in his lap with my balls and spent cock resting on his stomach.

“Fuck me, Aramis.” His voice was very low and husky. “I want to come inside you.”

I clutched his wrist to my mouth again and sucked. The potency of his blood made my head spin. It was like in those early days in Eastern Europe, when the taste of that Olympian ichor would make me blacken out. I was powerless to resist its lure, and with my lips glued to his flesh, I drank and drank, while my body shuddered and jolted as I fucked him, slamming my groin into his pelvis with brutal thrusts. Athos threw his head back, clawing at my thigh, my hip with long fingers, fucking up against me, and his sweat and blood trickled down onto the sacrificial slab in the ancient grotto of Locmaria. Another thrust, a groan, and his body went rigid as his dick swelled and twitched inside me and filled me in one endless gush.

“My beautiful boy,” he whispered when the power of speech returned to him. “There’s no-one like you, Aramis. Don’t doubt me, my love. Never.”

“Athos,” I spoke his name, whispering it into the sweat-slick skin like a prayer. “You are mine. I will not lose you, not this time.”

“Don’t leave me.”

“Never. Where you go, I will go.” I took his nipple between my teeth and tugged. “Even unto death.”

Yelping at the assault and laughing, Athos pulled me up by my hair and kissed me. “Till the end of time?”

“Always.”

***

The cold from the slab of the ruined sanctuary of Locmaria seeped into the space between my shoulder blades. I had lain on it, half-asleep, half-intoxicated, my body and mind still buzzing from the bitterness of our fight and the sweetness of Aramis’ taste in my mouth. His head lay tucked into the curve of my neck, his breath steady. Surely, he had not slept, but he had calmed for now, folded into my arm as if into a sheltering wing. He would not be the beloved of an Olympian deity, nor would I wish for him to be one. 

Yeshua, who had admitted to letting my beloved drink his blood, had sent me here to remember the man I had been before we had met. It was the man Aramis had loved, and not the god. Which one was I now, as I lay sated and warm beneath the stony vault that had once buried Porthos? The god or the man? I could narily tell one from the other, for both had been forces of Discord in this world.

“Is Antinous the apple of Discord that I had thrown into our midst, Aramis?” I spoke softly into his damp hair. He stirred against my side and his hand tightened underneath my armpit. “Is there really no way out of this except through an all out war? Have you and I not faced more bitter odds and lived to tell the tale?”

“I told you,” he breathed into my neck, “I won’t lose you. If I have to destroy all that is left of Olympus to do it…”

His words hovered and cooled in the air like a mist above our bodies.

“I remember the first time I saw you,” I said once I noted his thought would not be completed. “On the battlefield in Wallachia when you came for me like a bloodthirsty fiend, and I tested your strength and rejoiced that I had at last found in you a worthy adversary.” A shadow of a laughter lodged itself in my throat. “I was so lonely, Aramis. I had been rotting in that country for centuries. Too angry to go back home, too weak to make a new home for myself where I was. I had not allowed myself to feel anything at all after what had come to pass with Antinous… and Hadrian. Watching the one die, watching the other grieve.” I took a shuddering breath and let it wobble out of my chest in a shaky sigh. “I should have left Hadrian right away, but I had still owed Ares a war…”

“Ares,” Aramis hissed against my earlobe. “Everything always comes down to your fucking shaggy-eared brother.”

“Hadrian had attempted to take his own life several times. I had personally prevented him once,” I talked into the ceiling. “The emperor had been a good man and I had ruined him. I had ruined so many good men, Aramis. You tell me that I am the best of men, but I never was, I never could be.”

“Stop.” His fingers pressed down against my breastbone. “I _know_ you. I have known you like no other.”

“When I saw you,” I continued, “I had to possess you. I _did_ think of you as my Ganymedes, I won’t deny as much. I needed to take you for my own. And in the process I gave myself to you as I had given myself to no man or woman before. And if you know me, then you know this one thing to be true.”

“You give yourself so beautifully, Athos,” his voice caressed the skin over my cheekbone. “Your heart is so tender, and large enough to bear the love for more than one man.”

“But not more than one chyortik, surely,” I smiled and he bit the smile gently off my lips. “I love you, Aramis. I have loved you for so long, I would not even recognize myself if I were not to love you. Antinous… He is not a threat to you. The same way Marie had not been a threat to you. You know this, don’t you, my love?”

“Are you saying you and I should share him?” Aramis’ voice held an icy note in it still.

“I need you to promise me we can move forward from this. Tell me I do not need to worry about you… and him.”

His brow creased and his nostrils twitched. He hung his head and leaned it like a cat against my own forehead, bumping my nose with his own softly.

“You are right,” he whispered. “Antinous might be the apple of Discord. But I will _not_ play Paris in this myth. Nor Eve again, for that matter. The apple will remain unbitten.” He smiled at me with perfectly human teeth. “If that is your wish,” he added, looking into my eyes.

“It is,” I concurred, letting my fingers wind through the curls of his hair, bringing his face closer so I could taste my destiny upon his lips. “You are the one, flittermouse,” I pressed into the warm welcoming of his mouth. “You must not ever give up on me.”

“Never,” he swore against my lips.

Beyond the walls of the grotto, the waves still slapped petulantly against the rocks.

“I need you now more than ever, Aramis,” I added, my skin breaking out into a smattering of goosebumps. “Don’t let me drown again.”

“I would rip off the balls of any Titan or Olympian and feed them to Gaia to keep you safe, you know this,” he stated with implacable calm. 

For a few moments, I let our heads rest against one another, sharing nothing but breath. “Come back to the citadel with me, angel,” I finally said, scooping us both up off the cold floor of the grotto. He loved me, but he would not be happy I had only brought one horse.

***

**Mt. Olympus, 1184 BC**

The demigod had been drunk. Drunk on the libations that his hosts had poured down his throat, drunk on the scent the engulfed him like mist, rising from the bath their sister Hebe had drawn for them, drunk on the softness of the feathers of Eris’ wing as it lay like a shroud over his warm and naked limbs. Her back to his back as they slept. 

Softly, carefully, a hand caressed the contours of his face, and Athos had leaned into that touch, a moth drawn to a fatal flame.

“What must it be to have a parent love you,” Ares whispered, his eyes open in awe as he beheld the sleeping demigod’s form. “Your mother who had birthed you in secret, and sheltered you from those who’d do you harm, despite the world of gods and men who have showered her with scorn. She waits for you in Thira, and here you are, sprawled on the floor of your father’s palace, dripping wet.” His hand caressed the demigod’s flank, his fingers mapping a trail over the hills of the muscular glutes, into the valley between, and to the orifice that did indeed seep with moisture against his fingers. “Do you know what he said to me?” Ares whispered, curving his fingers inwards and swallowing his mortal brother’s sigh with his own lips. “He called me the most hateful of all the Olympian gods, to both him and my mother, whom he did not waste time besmirching with spurious accusations. How easily we _hate_ that which we once loved.” 

“Zeus said this?” Athos whispered, opening his eyes to look into the flames playing along Ares’ features. “To you?”

“He swore that had I sprung from the loins of another god, he would have tossed me into Tartarus, with the other children of Ouranos.”

“You make his neglect sound like a boon,” Athos smiled, letting his fingers run through the long strands of the God of War’s hair. 

“Your heart is much too permeable to love,” Ares’ voice was tinged with wonder. “Primed for it, reared upon it. You give yourself so freely, as you have with your erastes, and with Eris…” His fingers again stroked into the tender tightness between his brother’s thighs. “And with me,” he added in a hot whisper that tickled Athos’ neck. “I was raised by a Titan, you know,” Ares kept speaking in low tones. “My parents did not know quite what to make of me. They thought me simple, unimpressive in any way, so they sent me away to be raised by a distant relation, one not currently bound by the chains of Tartarus.”

“I find that part hard to believe,” Athos responded, his mouth falling open to let in his brother's probing tongue. 

“He taught me everything I know,” Ares grinned, “which is so say how to kill and make others appreciate the art of the kill. The worth of glory and selfless sacrifice, of heroism and the lure of the glorious death. But not much else. No one ever taught me even half of what you must've been taught.”

“You fought against us at Troy,” Athos grinned back. “You fought on the side of Love.”

“It was not in my best interest to have the war end,” Ares ground through his teeth. “I fought for both sides, puppy.”

“You fought for the sake of fighting,” the demigod sounded unconvinced. “And not because Aphrodite asked you to side with her?”

“I'm not Love’s bitch, puppy,” the God of War's words dripped with bitterness. “I will not be the butt of their jokes. Not again.”

Through a drunken haze, the demigod spoke again, “I think I could love you. And would you then scorn such a love?”

The God of War pressed closer, pulling the man from beneath the cover of Discord’s wing. “I've never seen a one such as you,” he'd said, his thumb dragging along the swell of his brother's lower lip. “I would not have you part from my side,” he added in a whisper. His hand caressed the curve of the demigod’s neck. “Nor would I have you bear the memory of this night.”

And yet, the demigod must have borne it. For who else could've told the blind bard the secret words imparted unto War by Zeus?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When we wrote the previous chapter, we honestly did not expect the "Who ate Antinous?" to be a question. But Audience loves Flitters so much, it warms the cockles of our evil hearts! Hope you enjoyed the Gross™.


	12. Helios

The wintry Ocean slung his rolling waves at the rocks of Belle-Île: he was angry, and his fingers were cold as death when I stepped down the stony slope that led into the sea. My feet caught on sharp-edged stones and shells. Like the Little Mermaid of Andersen’s sentimental tale, I left a trail of blood that coiled and swirled in water. My feet turned to ice, then my legs: white-blue crystals that refracted the light. Unlike the Atlantic, I was not born from the salty tears of fae; my flesh had risen from the sweet waters of the Loire, and when frost hit my surface it turned me to ice.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?”

I turned my head and looked back to shore through the waterfall that was already forming around me as the waters of my kin claimed me. Pale like a skull, his lips crimson, his eyes red, Vlad the Impaler stood there, biting his finger nervously. He was staring at the part of my naked thigh where ice met skin.

“It’s the only idea,” I told him. “Don’t worry, Vladic. It’s not the first time I’m doing this.”

“I know,” the vampire said, the gleaming red eyes full of worry. “But Oceanus is _angry_ today.”

The earth shook again. From the ramparts, stones fell, rolled down the slope and splashed into the sea.

“He’s been angry before.” I took a deep breath – a human habit that was hard to shake off in a mortal body – and raised my eyes to the grey skies that hung above our heads like a celestial ocean. “I’ll live.”

An undignified snort of laughter escaped him. “You better!” he said. “Or I’ll come down there personally to fetch you. Don’t leave me alone with-” he cast a quick glance over his shoulder, “ _them_.”

I smiled at him and then... I expired my last breath as I flung myself into the arms of Oceanus. My blood shattered into a million shards of ice. My body turned into a prism, the rays of Helios broke into a rainbow of colours as they passed through me. Water’s fingers reached out for me from the depths, my sisters, my kin, water of my water, and for one exhilarating moment I was one with them. We were one: we sang and murmured and rushed and roared with one voice.

The Titan rose before me like a kraken: a swirling vortex from the abyss, a maelstrom whose pull was irresistible and deadly. A force of nature that had governed over human lives for centuries and whom they’d poisoned, polluted and boiled until he rose and smote the human pest. Here on Earth, he was more powerful than Kronos; as powerful as his nephew the Sun and the mother that bore the entire Titan race.

The imprint of my human flesh remembered. Had I still worn it, it would have shivered. Instead, the memory of my human face smiled. “Greetings, my Father,” the waters sang. “You’ve made me a promise.”

When I returned to land, coughing and spluttering, flopping like a fish and trembling as ice melted around me while warm blood filled my restored mortal coil, Vlad lifted me on solid ground and wrapped his cape around me.

“The island stopped shaking,” he said and pulled me into his arms, rubbing my shivering body with vigorous hands. “Well done, Marie.

“I must have word with Yeshua, he can’t just resurrect people randomly,” I gasped and suppressed the urge to throw myself into the ocean again. To those bodies that were acquired rather than born from the surf, the first breath was always painful as harsh air hit the lungs, needle-sharp and full of nitrogen. “Unless you already did?”

“I didn’t. Yeshua doesn’t like me very much.”

“Does he know about-” I dropped my gaze meaningfully to his crimson mouth.

“I didn’t tell him.”

“Good. We might still need them.”

Vlad scooped me up in his arms and, despite my protestations, began to carry me up the slope as though I were the bride of Dracula. “I can walk!” I informed him, laughing. “But this is nice,” I admitted. “You _are_ a true gentleman, my dear.”

“You're as light as a feather,” he assured me.

He must have smelled the blood long before I did, but he didn’t lose his countenance. It was only once we entered the courtyard and saw the pool of burgundy spilled around a prone figure of a man that I saw his nostrils flare and his lips part.

“Let me down.”

“It wasn’t me, Marie!”

“I can see that.”

We approached the injured man cautiously. His arm disappeared under a rock that had dropped from the ramparts and there was blood on his face and in his hair where his skull had cracked.

“Grimley.” I knelt down next to him and felt for his pulse. He might have been immortal, but you never knew how individual bodies reacted to traumatic injuries.

“There is a pulse,” Vlad said. He was standing a few paces behind me with the air of a horse about to spook. Unlike Aramis, Vlad was never nonchalant around fresh blood.

“Does Athos know?”

“No.” The voice rang through the courtyard with the sound of a bell. Hera stood framed in the doorway, her peplos fluttering around her in the breeze. “The God of Discord and his betrothed haven’t returned yet.”

“ _Betrothed_?” I said. “Does… Aramis _know_?”

The Goddess of Marriage stared at me in haughty incomprehension. I sighed.

“We should get him inside,” I said. “Vlad, could you lend a hand?”

“I’d rather not…” The poor thing had a decided deer in the headlights look as he continued to stare at the pool of blood.

“All right. Fetch Yeshua then.”

“I believe that would be… indiscreet,” Hera said. “He’s wandered off with the cupbearer.”

“Cupbearer?”

“That’s what my husband used to call them.”

“Okay!” I said. “All _right_. Hera. Your _majesty_. Come and help me carry the Grigori to a bed or _gods help me_ I’m going to personally conduct Oceanus to your bedchamber.” Hera looked very much like she would refuse, but I stared her down and she came over rather meekly for a goddess and heaved Grimley up effortlessly with demi-titanic strength.

“It’s probably easier if I carry him alone,” she said, looking me up and down with a smirk. “This mortal body is quite puny, nymph. Especially in the nude.”

“I like it,” I said pointedly.

“Oh really? That’s nice.” She strode off with the unconscious Grigori dangling over her shoulder like a lost-and-found sheep.

“When Dr Flitterbatt shows up again, tell him to come to me and do his damn job,” I instructed Vlad. “Gods only know how he got out of there alive.” I muttered under my breath as I followed Hera down the corridor. Oceanus had said that the Mother was ready to crush the island to pebbles and dust and sink its stones in the deepest trench of the ocean after the sacrifice had been snatched out from under her nose. Had it been anyone else rather than Aramis, I would’ve feared that Gaia had buried him in her gullet and dragged him down into her molten core. But the demon would’ve talked his way out somehow. He always did. The only question was: how much danger was Athos in? And how much was Aramis prepared to risk for him yet?

***

_Listen. You who walk upon my sand, and stare with new eyes upon my wonders. You who dip your feet into the waters of my bioluminescence, and scoop it into your palms wanting to give the kiss of life. Listen to the sound of a thousand insects buzzing beneath my soil. To the sound of dried branches snapping in the wind._

_Come closer. Look at this little raven, lying dead at your feet, both heads twisted, both beaks open in an echo of a final squeal. Listen, listen to the cries of the ravens._

_Look at this grass. You do not recognize it as grass, do you? Each blade is dessicated, brittle straw, bereft of breath. Touch it. Let your fingers run through it as if you were carding them through the raven locks of your beloved, silken and strong._

_Listen. Look. Touch._

_Antinous, Antinous. Pick up the bird._

Jesus Christ walked through a deserted land, his lips moving in vain recitation. “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.” This, of course, he knew better than anyone not to be true. No one was with him, not even Judas who had begun to sicken from radiation poisoning. Soon, he would be relegated to resurrecting donkeys, he suspected. Out of sheer sentimentality, perhaps.

“Your rod and your staff, they comfort me,” Jesus spake and let out a long, dolorous sigh. This was the place where he had wanted to build his New Eden. It was nothing but radioactive wasteland, an ossuary filled with the bones of the faithful and faithless alike. “Your rod and your staff, they comfort me,” he repeated doggedly.

“Your rod and your staff,” a mellifluous echo repeated, startling Christ. “Which is which?” the echo inquired, drawing Jesus closer.

“Hello,” Christ said as he walked past a clump of tumbleweeds and discovered the source of the echo. Antinous sat on the ground, or rather, in a patch of fresh grass that threw the rest of the surroundings into stark contrast with its emerald hues of rebirth. “What do you have there?” he nodded towards a clump of shining black feathers cradled in the Divus’ hands.

“A two-headed raven,” Antinous answered with a smile, reaching his hands up towards Jesus to show him. “Do you suppose it is an omen of some kind?”

Jesus stretched out his fingers towards the creature when one of the heads emitted a tiny squawk and attempted to peck him. “It’s alive,” the Son of Man startled.

“It is now,” Antinous said, softly stroking the bird’s wings as it nestled into the palms of his hand. “He…? I think. I admit I was never big on ornithology before. He was dead when I found him.” He let his head fall to his own shoulder, still eyeing the creature in his palm. “I think,” he repeated. “Although I suppose I too was dead and now I walk among you.”

“You brought that bird back to life?” Jesus stated with awe.

If he were to be honest with himself, what he felt was a tinge of envy. For here too was a god with the power to resurrect, and seemingly effortlessly and without any true intention. But he had been the resurrection and the life, and yet this one, who did not even believe in him despite being torn from the veil by his own power _twice_ , shared his gift. This one, as pagan as Baal himself!

“You’re not circumcised, are you?” he asked.

Antinous smiled and unclasped his hands. The two-headed bird looked in opposite directions, and then took flight, or as close as such uncoordinated struggle could resemble flight.

“Are you referring to that horrid mutilation that my Hadrian fought so hard against your people to outlaw?”

“I’m guessing that’s a hard ‘no’ then,” Jesus sighed. He watched as Antinous stretched out upon the ground, green grass springing up around his body to cushion and comfort it in his repose. New blades of viridian striving to touch the smooth, tanned skin of the pagan Divus. “Are you doing all this?” he asked, pointing around to the nature springing where Antinous’ hands roamed over irradiated earth.

“She wants me to,” Antinous replied.

“Who?”

“The Mother.”

“The Heavenly Mother?” Jesus asked, catching himself in a bit of a quandary as that term could have really described Hera as well as his own mother.

“No, you odd monotheistic duck,” the Divus tittered appealingly, his face folding and unfolding like the petals of a rose. “The Earth Mother. Gaia.”

“You can talk to her?” Jesus attempted to ask with as little import as possible, while he placed himself upon the ground next to his new friend. He was a bit peeved to note that the hard ground he sat upon did not spring forth with new life under his tush.

“Anyone can talk to her, you just have to be willing to listen.” The Divus turned to the Son of Man. “Here, give me your hand.”

He had never thought much of his hands, they had been the hands of a carpenter, callused and rough, with hairy knuckles, and without any stigmata upon them they appeared utterly unremarkable. Letting his fingers slide across the doughy, soft palm of the Greek boy’s hand, Jesus was suddenly very aware of just how coarse and unremarkable his hands had been all along.

“Yeshua,” the Divus whispered, “I like the sound of it. Soft, like the wind blowing through the willows.” He bent forward and his forehead touched against Jesus’ own. “Listen,” he whispered and closed his eyes. A moment later, Christ closed his own, for it was not polite to stare.

_Love me, care for me, and I will be your garden._

Jesus trembled, for he had heard a voice like this before. The hand clasped inside his own was strong and warm. There was much still that they could teach each other.

“I will be like the dew to Israel,” Jesus whispered, with his eyes still closed, “he shall blossom like the lily; he shall take root like the trees of Lebanon.”

“I did not know you recited poetry,” a whisper like the caress of a summer’s breeze tickled his lips.

“Hosea 14:5,” Jesus whispered back. “I can recite some poetry, if you like,” he offered meekly.

The Greek boy smiled, eyelashes lowering like butterfly wings.

“‘Tis a fearful thing to love what death can touch,” Jesus began. “A fearful thing to love, to hope, to dream, to be - to be, And oh, to lose. A thing for fools, this, And a holy thing, a holy thing - to love.” He paused, his face so close to the Divus, opening his mouth to see if the summer’s breeze would pass right through his lips. Would it taste like the first drop of water after roaming the desert for forty days and nights?

He was, regrettably, not permitted to find this out because at that moment the air around them trembled, the clouds over their heads parted, and a golden chariot came racing down from the heavens until it hit the ground at a gallop a few paces away and a golden charioteer leapt from it to greet them.

“Brothers!” the otherworldly being exclaimed. He appeared to be a very robust, handsome man with dark, radiant skin and eyes that shone like gemstones in the sunlight. “Ah, a thousand pardons, gentlemen,” the newly arrived bowed. “In your companionable proximity, I had mistaken you for someone else. Tell me: has either one of you seen…” Here he dropped his booming voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “The God of Discord and a bloodsucking demon he calls his flittermouse?”

“Who wants to know?” the Divus asked with a distrustful frown.

“Hera’s bloody tits!” the stranger exclaimed. “You’re the statue from Athos’ garden!” He glanced over at Jesus and declared, “Well, I have no idea who _you_ are, but if you’re with him then you must be all right.”

Jesus had suffered many indignities in his life, but this one here was about to rank right up with the humiliations he had to undergo before his crucifixion.

“Anyways,” the guest from on high continued, “who’s going to go tell my dear friends that Porthos is here?”

*******

Aramis stormed into the sickroom with the warlike air of the cavalier of old, smelling of ichor and looking decidedly dishevelled. His cassock was grey with stone dust, his hair was matted and his teeth gleamed.

“The Queen of the Gods,” he said, rolling his eyes a little, “says you require my services, Madame.”

After dumping Grimley on the bed, Hera had wandered off vaguely in search of amusement. Those Hellenic deities were easily bored, and when ennui overcame them, they came up with _ideas_ , which gave me ample cause to worry. I made a mental note to check on Hera once the present crisis was over and the Grigori stopped bleeding all over the sheets in what was surely an act of poetic justice.

“Be a dear and stop the haemorrhage,” I told Aramis. “Unless you want to take advantage of it, as long as it’s freely given.”

Grimley’s eyes snapped open.

“I’ve eaten,” Aramis said curtly. He rolled up his sleeves, washed his hands and searched methodically through his medi-kit.

“We put Grimley in your bed so you’d have all your medical paraphernalia at hand,” I informed him. “I told Hera you wouldn’t object.”

“Like she’d worry.” Aramis strode over to the bed, pulling on surgical gloves, nostrils flaring. “Don’t aggravate me, nymph, I’ve had a trying day.”

“Yes, we must talk about it.”

“Pas devant les domestiques,” Aramis said.

Grimley raised his eyes to the heavens with more eloquence that I would’ve thought possible in a mute gesture.

“I have to set the fingers in your hand, Grigori,” Dr Flitterbatt proclaimed after examining the maimed limb. “The ulna and radius appear to be intact, but as there might be capillary fractures, I will put your whole arm in a sling.”

“I’ll do my best to still carry a tray, your Grace,” Grimley said weakly.

“Why aren’t you unconscious?” Aramis asked. “Was one blow to the head not enough?”

“The pleasure of seeing your worshipful excellency again has revived me.”

“I better put you to sleep. The operation will be painful.” A syringe flashed in Aramis’ hand. “Don’t worry, it won’t be permanent.”

“Shame,” Grimley muttered dreamily as whatever concoction the demon used to induce sleep hit his bloodstream. “ _Le domestique_ , pah!”

“What happened?” Aramis and I said simultaneously once the eavesdropping presence had been eliminated.

Aramis spoke first: “I know that Yeshua resurrected the boy again. Does he not know that you can’t simply take back a sacrifice? You must _ask_ for it!”

“His approach to religion has always been rather human-oriented,” I said. “He means well.”

“His meaning well almost got us killed. _Vlad_ has been more useful in dealing with this mess, and all he did was impale people.”

“Gaia didn’t show up then.” I considered it wise to steer away from the subject of the vampire, the Messiah and the catamite, for now.

“On the contrary. She did show up and almost crushed us in what for a Titaness might have been a tender embrace. I wouldn’t know, I never consorted with one in the flesh, as it were.”

“She very much liked the sacrifice,” I said. “I know that for a fact.”

Aramis raised his eyebrows and half-turned away from where he was tending to Grimley’s broken bones. “Is this – forgive me for being so indelicate – why you are naked?”

I tilted my head. “It’s certainly not for the purpose of seducing you, M. l’abbé.”

“That suspicion didn’t cross my mind.”

“I paid a visit to Oceanus. The Titans are not happy with us at present, but I managed to persuade him not to drown Belle-Île. For the time being.”

“That’s encouraging.” Aramis began to splint Grimley’s fingers. “And we trust that he has some clout with Mother dearest?”

“Something stopped her. She didn’t crush you in the grotto. She only flung a few rocks – it’s unfortunate that one landed on the Grigori.”

“Very.”

“Oh, and that bust of Nicolas Fouquet that you so admired in the lobby fell over and smashed its nose.”

“Tragic.”

“What happened in the grotto?”

“Oh, you know. Rocks fell. Nobody died.”

“There is a time to be flippant, chéri. This is not it. Where’s Athos?”

“Checking on Antinous, I suppose.” Aramis finished splinting and began wrapping bandages around Grimley’s arm. “I had to promise him not to kill the boy again, so that particular path towards an armistice has been closed. He gave him to _Jesus_!” he said, gritting his teeth so hard that I fancied I saw sparks fly.

“That’s generous.” I coughed. I would have laughed, but Aramis was holding Grimley’s brittle bones in his hand and I didn’t want to throw him into the throes of homicidal rage.

“He’s of no use to Jesus. He would’ve been of use to Gaia. Fertilising her with his blood, that’s what those ancient proto-deities thrive on. Literally.”

“He might be of use to Jesus.” I couldn’t help myself.

Aramis’ mouth spasmed. “Marie. Don’t be crude.”

“Only because the priests of your religion are celibate and pure as the driven snow, M. l’abbé, you shouldn’t expect Yeshua to stay lonely forever.”

“I do not wish to discuss it!” His voice sliced through the air like the rapier he once wielded with such deadly grace.

“Suit yourself.” I shrugged, sat down on the edge of the bed and wrapped myself in a discarded blanket. “Tell me, then: how did you get out of the grotto?”

“Blood sacrifice.” Aramis tugged off one of his surgical gloves and showed me his hand, palm-upwards. A very faint web of scars criss-crossed it.

“Why haven’t they faded yet?” I raised my eyes to his face. “Surely, after you drank from Athos-”

“I’ve been using this particular method to propitiate and seal pacts ever since we set off from that holy mount of his.” He flexed his hand and then relaxed his fingers into my grip. “It takes longer to fade than it should. I believe it might have something to do with the sacrificial nature of the wound. Just look at Jesus’ stigmata.”

“It’s a clever trick,” I said pensively, stroking the line of Aramis’ finger with my thumb. “Turning yourself into a vessel of divine blood. So you have given Earth the Divus’ blood from your own veins, and then?”

“And then,” he coughed around a sudden roughness in his throat, “I gave her the blood of Athos.”

“She must’ve liked that.”

“She did. But you see, Marie: the other option we talked about-”

“Vlad’s basement.”

“Yes, that. It won’t be enough. Not after the Divus’ blood, not after Olympian blood.”

“There are other gods around,” I said.

“I can’t kill Hera,” he admitted with an embarrassed air. “But Ares… Oh, Marie! I’d gladly pledge myself in servitude to the Grigori if that meant I’d never have to see that mangy cur again!” He sighed heavily. “Athos will hate us, but there’s nothing for it: we must find a way to catch Ares.”

“Would a trapping pit do? Vlad can provide the spikes.” I squeezed Aramis’ hand. “If Ares was killed, that would be the end of War.”

“ _A_ war,” Aramis said. “As I told Athos: there are other gods of war, and other wars.”

“Titans versus Olympians is our most pressing problem right now.” I leaned over and pressed a chaste kiss to Aramis’ lips. “It’s a shame we have to keep one of the Olympians alive.”

“And we will,” he vowed, pressing my hand to his heart. “Together, Marie, we _must_.”

On the bed, Grimley stirred. “Is it safe for the _domestique_ to return to the world of the living?” he asked, barely moving his lips.

“That’s good timing,” I said, pointing to the neatly bandaged and immobilised arm. “Your expertise as an anaesthetist is truly unsurpassed, doctor.”

“I know,” Aramis said smugly. “My tutors were always amazed that I judged it just right.” He picked up a fresh glove and focused on the grumbling wounded. “It’s a good thing your skull is as hard as a ram’s, Grigori.”

Now that his patient was awake, Dr Flitterbatt’s bedside manner was truly second to none. He was sitting, with the top buttons of his cassock undone and his sleeves rolled up, on the edge of the mattress, wiping Grimley’s forehead with a piece of sterile gauze. Occasionally, his nostrils would flare hungrily at the scent of the Grigori’s Olympian blood, but apart from that, his face was the impassive mask of a medical professional during a routine treatment. Only his black eyes burned like pits of hell.

“That’s quite enough medical attention for one day,” the Grigori mumbled and attempted to swat Aramis’ hand away. “I’ll be alright.”

“I know,” the infernal physician told him. “You are immortal.”

“You really don’t have to mop my brow, M. l’abbé.” The Grigori sent me a desperate look behind Aramis’ back. “Tell him, Madame.”

“Oh, but I believe he does.” I leaned my chin on Aramis’ shoulder. “Dr Flitterbatt knows best. Why, without his tender care, I would’ve succumbed to consumption much sooner than I did.” I coughed twice and pressed my lips to Aramis’ cheekbone. “Trust him. He’s a doctor.”

“I know,” Grimley said gloomily, rolling his eyes and his head in the pillow. “I was there when he graduated. Twice.”

“Then you should appreciate that I know what I’m doing,” Aramis said smoothly as he grabbed his patient’s chin and forced his head back.

“Wasting your time tending to an immortal being,” Grimley wrinkled his nose. “Wouldn’t you be better employed elsewhere?”

“We’re all immortals here.” I shrugged my shoulders. “There’s no point tending to any of us. Not in the way you mean.”

“Oh, please, Madame!” Grimley said in pained tones. “Do not aggravate an invalid by reminding him of the other way.”

“Your bleeding might be staunched, Grigori, but the wound hasn’t closed yet.” Aramis dabbed disinfectant on a clean piece of gauze and pressed it to Grimley’s forehead, ignoring the Grigori’s cries of pain and protest. “Hold his hand, Marie,” he added as an aside. “If you don’t stop thrashing around like one of St Anthony’s fishes, I will be forced to strap you to the bed for your own good.”

“Is this what you say to Athos?” I asked, intrigued.

“Please, Madame!” Grimley groaned. “Have mercy!”

“The wound will not kill you, Grigori,” Dr Flitterbatt explained. “But it might get infected. And if the infection gets to your brain – well, as you can imagine the consequences would be dire. Inflammation and swelling, brain fever, culminating in gibbering imbecility. That wouldn’t be fair to your Kyrios, would it?”

“No, it wouldn’t,” Grimley said in the tone of a funeral bell.

“I could wrap a bandage around your head, if you like,” I offered cheerfully. “I always rather fancied playing doctor and nurse with Dr Flitterbatt.”

“What did I do to deserve such treatment?” Grimley asked the ceiling. “Did I kick puppies in a previous life? Ah, I forget: Dr Flitterbatt would not punish me for kicking dogs, or at least one dog.”

“You think this is punishment, Grimley?” Aramis asked smoothly, dabbing the wound where it disappeared under Grimley’s thick hair. “You don’t know me at all.”

“Only too well, your reverent physicianship. But one wonders: why not ask your Lord to pop over and heal me? Not to cast aspersions on you and your caregiving skills, doctor, but the Jewish boy is a cracking faith healer, and right now I am prepared to have faith.”

“The Messiah is currently otherwise occupied,” Aramis said, barely moving his lips.

“Oh is he!” Grimley exclaimed in the tone of most profound surprise. “Do tell!”

“He’s making friends with the catamite,” I said, watching Aramis’ jaw tense and the corner of his mouth tauten. “I believe the Second Coming is imminent.”

Aramis stood up abruptly and left the room, slamming the door behind him and ignoring the sudden coughing fit to which his patient had just succumbed.

***

It wasn’t long after Aramis had stormed off that the news of Porthos’ arrival reached me. I left Grimley in the care of the Holy Virgin, who assured me that she was a very competent nurse and that if someone could procure fresh crocodile dung, she’d concoct a dead-cert kill-or-cure poultice to tend to the Grigori’s wounds. “And it’s not as if it can kill him,” she said reasonably, while Grimley assumed a marked resemblance to a conch snail intent on withdrawing into its shell and leaving behind a pair of goggling eyes that peered fearfully over the edge of the blanket. Miriam chatted amicably about the Book of Enoch, which, as she said, she’d always found rather overdramatic. “Tell me about those Watchers who caused all the evil in the world,” she requested. “Did that truly happen because they came to Earth with Semyaza and were consumed with lust for human women? Typical, that’s what it is. I was talking to Hera about it the other day, those celestials never learn. And you never know what kind of descendants such unions produce. Athos seems nice enough, as long as the armour’s off, so to speak, but I can’t be having with the God of Discord. Hera and I quite disagreed on that point. She thinks my Yeshua is a namby-pamby, but I told her, Madam, I said, my son died for _all_ of humanity. Your boy only ever died for love, which is an embarrassing way for an adult man to go. Their fathers were quite different, of course. Yeshua’s Father was never consumed with lust for anyone, He always claimed to be quite against that sort of thing. I believe He was just repressed. Why, He sent the Holy Ghost to do the deed… And you know what? Hera said that this reminded her of her late husband, who pulled a very similar stunt with a cuckoo. So anyway,” she said and patted the horrified Grigori’s thigh. “Tell me: did _you_ sire any giants that ravaged the Earth?”

At this point, I felt sure that Athos’ Watcher was in very good hands. I blew him a kiss from the door and went to greet our Titan friend and grandfather of one of my most emo lovers.

Since it was obvious that the Three Of Them wished to have some quality time alone and the Grigori had hurriedly convalesced – I spotted his bandaged form shuffling to the cellar in an excellent imitation of a mummy – I decided it was time for the long-overdue chat with Hera. I did not begrudge her the fun she was having with her stepson Discord, for it was just the Olympian way; but Aramis was on edge, and right now I needed his wits if my little idea of using War to our advantage was to work.

Hera was lounging at the bar in the lobby, treating herself to a G&T and feeding peanuts to Athos’ owl and Jesus’ pigeon. Next to her, Miriam was enjoying a slice of honey cake. “Your protégé is objectionable in many ways,” she told me. “But he does bake a mean cake. Her Olympian majesty agrees.”

“Miriam refuses to share,” Hera informed me morosely. “Not even a crumb. Me, the queen of gods who has been deprived of ambrosia since time immemorial!”

“It’s only been a few weeks,” Miriam said. “And you’ve had your share. I told you not to wolf it down like that. You must learn to relish it.”

It struck me, not for the first time, that Miriam’s vernacular did not sound Old Aramaic at all. In fact, there was very little linguistic confusion in our motley group. Even Vlad, who, despite his many excellent qualities, could hardly be called divine, had no problem joining in everyone’s conversations.

“It’s the Holy Ghost,” Miriam said as I addressed the issue of languages. “He makes people speak in tongues. I wonder when he’s going to bestow any of his other gifts on someone – you know the ones: wisdom, understanding, knowledge. Piety…”

“Sophia is the bird of Wisdom,” Hera said stiffly.

“So’s the Ghost.” All three of us looked at the pigeon, who glared back at us with his one good eye and puffed out his chest, tilting his head as if contemplating whom to peck first. Miriam took the last bite of her cake and patted Hera on the arm. “There cannot be enough wisdom, that’s what I say. The boys are doing their best, but sometimes it strikes me that Grimley’s chickens have been more useful. At least they lay an egg every other day.”

“Are eggs even kosher?” sneered Hera.

It was time to interfere. I wasn’t quite sure if an Olympian goddess on Earth could get drunk on alcohol, but if Athos was any indication that was a distinct possibility. Hera’s idea of a G&T appeared to be gin with a drop of tonic for luck. “Permit me to mix you a proper drink.” I stepped behind the bar and checked the supplies. “What do you ladies say to a Virgin Mary?”

“So you see, my dear queen,” I told Hera once I’d got her into a mellow mood. Miriam had switched from Virgin to Bloody and was humming an old Galilean lullaby or possibly war chant, if I understood the metaphors correctly. “You see, Hera, you really shouldn’t try to fuck Athos. I know, I know, I’m the one to talk!” I raised my hand. “But circumstances were somewhat different then. We weren’t at the brink of obliteration.”

“You can always come and live with me,” Miriam offered. “If this world ends.”

“Do you have room?” Hera asked.

“We have seven different types of heaven,” Miriam said. “I confirmed it with the Grigori. There’s one for the fallen angels, Aramis should feel right at home,” she winked at me.

“You really like him,” I said, thoughtfully.

“He has very nice manners.”

“He’s a demon.”

“He’s prayed me down to Earth twice.”

“He drinks blood,” said Hera.

“So do all good Christians.”

Hera and I exchanged a look. “Fair enough,” I shrugged. “But anyway, Hera, what I was about to say: do not fuck Athos. No, not even when he’s being Discord and begging for it by way of being your relative. If you truly have a hankering for god-cock,” I offered in the spirit of sisterhood, “I can lend you an excellent replica. But I must warn you: it’s _huge_.”

A grimace of disgust flittered across Hera’s haughty features. “How very Priapic. You might think he was sired by a satyr. His Father’s was tiny as a boy’s,” she said proudly.

“Yes,” I nodded gravely. “I thought it might’ve been.”

“And not circumcised, am I right?” Miriam said and sighed. “I thought not. I was telling Yeshua he’s fighting a lost battle there. Apparently that was the last thing his Father told him before he scarpered, and it worries Yeshua that he can’t comply with his Father’s last wishes.”

“Was he supposed to do the circumcising himself?” Hera asked. “Surely that’s…” she cast for the word that expressed a concept that was new to her, “ _unhygienic_.”

“He could always ask Dr Flitterbatt to do it for him,” I suggested.

“‘ _Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son’s foreskin and touched Moses’ feet with it’_ ,” Miriam explained.

“Kinky,” I said and took a swig of my drink.

“ _‘Kinky’_?” Hera repeated the word the way I’d said it and looked at the Holy Ghost as though expecting him to provide a seamless translation, like the babel fish. The pigeon blinked his beady eye. If a beak could’ve sniggered, he would. “Oh, you mean like ‘conjugal’? “Familial’?”

“That’s the best you can do in Olympian, I guess,” I said. The Holy Ghost picked at the crumbs on Hera’s plate, radiating a very Grigori-like helpfulness.

“‘Roman’!” Miriam exclaimed. “That’s what you said, Marie, isn’t it? But Romans didn’t circumcise their sons. They were famously against it.”

I looked from one goddess to the other; so far away from home, so out of their time. I wished I could help them understand the richness of human experiences such as I had lived through as centuries trickled by like a river. It was a shame that humanity was gone and that all we were left with was a bunch of more or less maladjusted gods and demons. For the briefest of moments, I permitted myself to feel a pang at the thought of Marion. I missed her level-headed, unsentimental approach to crises of any kind. Perhaps her work out there was done and I could ask her to come back to the Island of Beauty?

Ah, no. There was one among us who was not neurotic. Porthos had always been as straightforward and sane as they come. He was, of course, not my type, but he was a Titan and the Son of Helios. That counted for something.

I was just opening my mouth to nudge the Goddess of Marriage into the right direction, namely away from her stepson, when she forestalled me.

“You tell me not to bed the God of Discord, nymph,” she said. “But I am permitted to talk to him, am I not?”

“Yes?” I said cautiously. In a way, all this reminded me of our old Parisian days, when I had been the confidante of Anne of Austria and when outwitting the Cardinal was one of my favourite pastimes.

“Very well. There is something I can tell him that will be of great interest to him.” She slid from the bar stool, swayed only a little and strode off, with Sophia rocking gently on her shoulder.

Miriam, propping her head up on her fist, emptied the last drops of vodka in her very-definitely-not-Virgin, downed the drink and licked the tomato juice off her lips like a content cat. “I shall tell Yeshua to learn how to make this. Much better than the slop he used to make back at Cana.”

“I’m not sure if it’s kosher.”

“I don’t give a flying fuck,” the Mother of God said cheerfully. I glanced sideways at the Holy Ghost, who fluffed up his feathers and preened.

“Don’t put words into the Holy Virgin’s mouth,” I hissed.

The pigeon twisted his neck and blinked his one eye. “Coo?” he said innocently.

“It’s a pick-me-up,” I told Miriam, pointing at her empty glass. “It’s supposed to be drunk on the morning after, but at the End of Days every day is the morning after. We’re out of tomato juice, I’m afraid, but there’s still plenty of booze left. I’ll teach you how to drink _properly_.”

“I like the look of the green stuff,” Miriam said. “It looks like liquid gemstones.”

“No, no. The sticky green stuff always comes last, when everything else is gone and you don’t care if you live or die. Even if you are mortal.”

“I meant it, Marie. You can always come to live in heaven if there’s nowhere else to go on Earth,” Miriam said, watching me mix her a blackberry champagne cocktail sans ice.

“Is that even possible? Is heaven not on lock-down? Fairy is.”

“We’re not fairies,” Miriam said. “We welcome all sorts, that was the whole _point_.”

“How very Hufflepuff of you,” I said. Miriam merely looked blank.

“I’m telling you, we have a heaven for the angel choirs, one for the Watchers, and one for the archangels, seraphim and all,” she continued. “Why not a nymph? And anyway, with Yeshua’s Father gone, I’m now officially Queen of Heaven and Earth, I can do what I like.”

 _Hubris_ , a tiny part of my brain supplied. But on the whole, I approved of Miriam’s attitude. “Thanks,” I said. “Heaven is not for me, but it’s nice to know that I have the option. I always liked it on Earth. It was good fun while it lasted. The human experience is exhilarating.”

“Why do you think it’s over for you?”

“I’m not like you. This body won’t last forever.” I gestured down on myself. “It’s not the healthiest one I’ve ever had. It’s the water. It’s contaminated. And so am I.”

“Yeshua can do something about this.” Miriam touched the side of my face where my psoriasis was flaring up.

“Thank you for not suggesting crocodile dung poultice.”

She stared at me for a moment and then we both broke out in a fit of giggles. “That was just for the Grigori!” Miriam gasped. “A very special concoction.”

The door burst open, a gush of wind hurtled in, carrying it its wings the windswept and strangely radiant figure of Jesus Christ.

“Mother,” he said, clutching Miriam’s hands in his and pressing them to his lips. “I’d like you to give me your blessing. And then we must say goodbye, for Antinous and I are leaving this island for the mainland.”

“ _How_?” she said, laughing and brushing a leaf from his hair.

He looked at her, rather taken aback. “On water.” Then, he kissed her on the forehead. “It’s going to be all right. Earth is on our side.”

I slipped away quietly and made for the basement in search of Aramis. The demon must have done _something_ right. He had, as ever, the devil’s own luck.

***

“A man fell from the sky in a golden chariot.” I blinked up at Antinous as if he had been speaking anything but Greek. “Claims to be a friend of yours.”

My mouth still agape, I glanced over at Aramis, who had just returned from apparently patching up Grimley and had taken to pouring over manuscripts from Marie’s library while sporting a pair of glasses he decidedly did not need. They looked incredibly becoming, however, and I did not find it within me to pester him on that account.

“Don’t look to _me_ for aid,” Aramis replied in English. “You know everything it says sounds like gobbledygook to me.”

“Koine Greek sounds like gobbledygook, chyortik? The language of the New Testament? Since when?”

“Since it falls from the lips of the living paradoxy.”

“Domine?” I turned back towards the sound of Antinous’ voice. “I left him with Yeshua. Do you know a man named Pothos?”

“Porthos?” Aramis and I exclaimed in tandem. I shot my beloved a disappointed look.

“Yes, that makes more sense. Pothos is a climbing vine.”

“His brain is full of vegetation,” Aramis muttered under his breath in French.

I took Antinous by the arm. “Thank you for telling me, caterpillar. I’ll come get our friend presently.” I cast Aramis another look while he pretended not to mind me. “He’ll learn new languages soon enough, you know, he’s a God,” I could not help but snipe at my beloved.

“What’s the use? There are no people left to _speak_ them!”

“Oh, you have an answer for everything, don’t you?”

“Domine.” The touch of Antinous’ hand called me back. I looked into his eyes and found gold reflecting back in them. “You’re glowing.”

I shut my eyes and willed the armor of Discord away. It destroyed everything it touched, and our friendship with Porthos was already tenuous at best at that precise moment.

Apparently, my concerns were somewhat one-sided, as Porthos hastily demonstrated by throwing his arms around me and embracing me in a warm, fraternal fashion.

“Ah! My excellent cuz!” he pronounced, slapping both my shoulders with heavy palms. “You are looking positively terrific, all things considered! Must be the company,” he nodded in the direction of Antinous and winked at me, while making a rather lascivious gesture involving his hand as well as his mouth. “I see you’re effectively building yourself a second Mount You.”

“Well, as luck would have it,” I veered him away from Jesus and Antinous, flushed with unexpected embarrassment, “you were the one who built this place yourself. Remember?”

“Ah, yes! That was right before I met the Mami Wata!” Porthos beamed. “Now _those_ were happy days, indeed. Although, I have to say, I did an excellent job fortifying this citadel. It’s still here, at the End of Days! Golly!”

To avoid another horrendous family banquet, I had Grimley, freshly bandaged yet still radiating with impertinence, arrange repast for three, which I had decided to stage in one of the bar cellars of Citadelle Vauban. Having served us one of the most expensive vintages he could find, the Grigori positioned himself in the role of sentinel again. All that was missing was a drum set and a letter from the nymph upstairs, and we might have resembled a scene from the time of Richelieu, who suddenly seemed a much more desirable opponent than Kronos and Rhea.

“Alors?” I asked, falling easily back into the French habit. “The last letter we had from you gave no indication of it being safe for us to meet. What’s changed?”

“With things quieting down, you know, with all the humans being extinct,” Porthos spoke, munching on a roll of salami, “this is what we call the calm before the storm.”

“Meaning?” Aramis asked, intently sipping his wine.

“Well, on the plus side,” Porthos flipped one palm up, “My Titan fam are primordial forces, so they don’t exactly do things quickly, but when they do, they do it decisively. For example, my cousin Pallas, you know - the Titan of Warcraft? It took him ages to finally come up with the stratagem of killing Athena. But when he thought of it, well…” Porthos made a cutting motion with his finger along the line of his collarbones. My blood ran cold and I repeated the name Pallas to myself. There was a Titan whose balls I wanted to personally rip off.

“That was on the plus side?” Aramis chimed in. “I can’t wait to hear what’s on the minus side.”

“Right!” Porthos flipped his other palm up. “On the minus side, once they're done getting rid of all the humans, which should be any day now, they’re going to come after the rest of you. Or namely you, and your brother Ares. Since you’re all that’s left.”

“There must be a way to reason with them,” Aramis said, rubbing his temples with both hands. “There must be something we can give them. They can _have_ Ares!”

“Well, sure, the fastest way to end the war is to eat War!” Porthos laughed and a tremor ran through my body. “What’s the use of War and Discord in a world without people?” Porthos shrugged.

“You can also eat Discord, since you can’t have one without the other,” I pointed out quietly. “Cut out the middleman!” Aramis snapped at me.

“Surely, after everything you’ve learned of him lately, you cannot have second thoughts about throwing that dog to the dogs?” His hand brushed warmly against the side of my neck. “Athos, let them have Ares!”

Wherever he was, my troublesome sibling, as angry as I had been with him, I had no desire to see him dead. At least not by a Titan’s hand. I would personally give him a warrior's death that he merited, were he to show his face again.

“They won’t just stop at Ares,” I replied. “You know that. They won’t stop until _all_ of us are dead or locked up in Tartarus.”

“It’ll be easy enough for me to bargain for your life, Athos,” Porthos said with surprise warmth. “I can always claim you’re my prisoner. Hey, it worked that time d’Artagnan and I held you prisoner in England!”

“That is an excellent idea,” Aramis interjected, squeezing my hand. “You _love_ playing prisoner, remember?”

“You give them Ares,” Porthos went on, “that leaves you the last of the Olympians, they’ll grant your life to my safe keeping, no problem.”

“Yes… but…”

“But?”

I glanced from Porthos to Aramis, uncertain of how to continue.

“The thing is..,” I muttered with growing frustration.

“Oh, Hera’s tits, man! Will you speak!” Porthos urged.

“The thing is,” a regal, womanly voice carried from across the room, “he would not be the last of the Olympians.” I looked over at Grimley, who certainly did deserve a thrashing, immortal, angelic or neither. The treasonous gnat avoided my eyes by bowing like a sycophant before Hera.

Porthos leapt to his feet. “She’s alive! She’s _she_! Your father’s wi-”

“Widow,” Aramis supplied helpfully.

At the sound of that word, I looked over from Porthos to Hera and back again, and placed my hands over my eyelids, groaning out, “Oh _no_.”

“I don’t believe you’ve officially met,” Aramis continued in dulcet tones. “Hera, Queen of the Gods, this is Porthos, Son of Helios, and our beloved friend who saved all our lives, including yours, on Olympus as it lay in ruins.”

“Merciless Furies,” I muttered, helpless to hold back the tide of lust that I suspected was about to crash over all of us.

“Does he fight on our side now?” Hera asked, taking a few steps further into the cellar.

“I do, Madam, most vehemently!” Porthos proclaimed with a look that I had seen upon his face in several moments of romantic ardor.

“Well, that’s news to me,” I whispered under my breath.

“Truth be told, Athos,” Porthos breathed into my ear, pulling me closer, “Da had sent me here with the order to eat one of you as a warning.” I trembled, tightening my jaw. “I was going to eat Vlad, but now I think I'll _eat_ your Ma instead.” And then, gods help me, he winked. “Madam, I'm yours to command!” he exclaimed, letting me go.

“In that case, I know what we must do,” Hera continued, boldly stepping up to our table. “We spoke earlier of killing Kronos. I know where you can go to seek help.”

“For you, Madam,” Porthos declared with hearts in his eyes and butterflies in his throat, “to the pits of Tartarus and back!”

I opened my eyes, beholding Aramis, beaming at me from across the table with a look of absolute pleasure. “My prayers have been answered,” my beloved said with a delighted sigh.

“Perhaps we ought to coordinate prayers next time,” I replied, with much less enthusiasm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See, Audience? All will be well. Porthos is here!


	13. Selene

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Behold... the Three Good Boys!

**Belle-Île, winter**

“You do know the story of Phaethon, do you not?”

“I would hear it from your beautiful lips again, a thousand more times,” the Son of Helios proclaimed with ardor at Hera’s feet.

Zeus’ widow smiled and let her long, pale fingers run through the curls on Porthos’ head. He was charming, the Son of Sun. She was not used to being wooed this way, in such an open guise and without any subterfuge. Did he even have the ability to transform himself into a bird, she wondered. No, the Titans were not known for their powers of transformation. They were what they were.

“Phaethon was the son of Clymene, one of the Oceanids, and your father, Helios,” she spoke while Porthos gazed up at her with rapt attention. “But his Oceanid playmates did not believe that his father was the Sun, which made bitterness rise up in Phaethon’s heart and his pride stung him painfully. Clymene, who knew that a woman’s word on such a topic was never weighted the same as a man’s, told her petulant son to seek the requisite proofs from his own father. And Helios, who was as kind-hearted as I find you to be, promised his child to grant him any wish to prove his paternity.”

“That was nice of Da,” Porthos nodded. “He’d always taken very good care of me, I need not have questioned my paternity,” he added with pride.

To look upon him, one would have to be blind to question it, Hera thought. Such warmth, such boldness, such power. For how many thousands of years had this one roamed the Earth, ate, drank, and cavorted with mortals, who were all too blind to see the very Sun before them?

“Filled to the brim with youthful boasting, Phaethon asked his father to drive the golden chariot for a day. But the boy was still young and inexperienced, no match for your father’s willful horses.”

“Oh ho ho,” Porthos placed his giant hand against his heart and bowed his head. “My dear, they are only willful in the grip of unskilled hands.”

Hera’s cheeks flushed and her hands trembled, but she composed herself before continuing. “As I was saying, Phaethon was ill-equipped to drive the chariot, and after the first few moments of exultation, it became obvious that soon enough the chariot would come crashing onto Earth, and doom the planet. Horror-stricken, we watched from Olympus as the chariot plummeted closer in a blaze of uncontrolled fire. Something had to be done to avert disaster.”

“Yes,” the Son of Helios agreed darkly. “Something always has to be done.”

“My husband,” Hera continued, “Zeus… He was forced to throw one of his thunderbolts and destroy the chariot before it hit the ground.” She stopped, lost in faraway thoughts. Upon his knees at her feet, the Son of Helios stared at her face as if upon a vision. Never had a woman or goddess been so lovely as Hera at this moment of remembrance of her dearly departed husband’s former glory. “Of course, tragically, Phaethon was killed in the process too,” she concluded her tale and redirected her eyes to meet with Porthos’ adoring gaze. “You are a very experienced charioteer, dear Porthos,” she spoke warmly. “And it is no wonder that you stand at your rightful place at your father’s side. But do not think me weak for worrying what should come to pass if someone had the thought and wherewithal to cast your chariot from the skies.”

“My heart’s own goddess!” Porthos exclaimed, pressing his lips fervently to Hera’s beautiful, long fingers. “I will steer my father’s golden horses as if they were a troika of baby deer, if only to reassure you of my safety, since you are kind enough to care for it.”

Hera smiled, fighting moisture back from her eyes. He was a Titan and they were at war. Could she trust him enough to love him back, after everything she’d been through?

“I also entrust you with my son,” she spoke, swallowing around the lump of grief that had materialized in her flutelike throat. “He is all I have left in this world. He is all that sustains me.”

Porthos tilted his head and scratched his beard. “You… you do mean Athos, right?” he asked a bit shyly. “He’s the son you mean? Because he’s the only son whom I’m taking with me, besides Aramis, who is your son-in-law at best.”

Such a flutter of joy in her heart at hearing this one speak, Hera beamed and leaned down to place a chaste kiss against the Son of Helios’ forehead. She had spent her entire life tied to the brother who had seduced her, whom she loved despite all that he’d put her through, his constant bouts of philandering, entangled in an endless web of transgressions and forgiveness. She had loved Zeus because he was all she had ever known of love. For the first time in her life, she was free to choose.

“Please, bring my sweet boy back to me safely,” she said with a squeeze to his hand. She was free to choose, but she was also now free to wait. Her heart, at long last, was her own, and she was in no hurry to give it away again.

***

The wide hood over my head hid my face from Helios’ all-seeing eye as I made acquaintance with his horses. Unlike Cousin Pegasus, these four steeds were not blue, but rather black as onyx, with golden manes that fell almost to kiss the ground and golden wings that stabbed high into the skies. 

“You’re beautiful beasts,” I told them, as they let me run my hands through shimmering strands of gold, wet nostrils poking at me as they butted against my head. “Which one are you, huh?” I asked the one in the front who was attempting to chew on the bottom of my cloak. “Pyrois? Aethon?”

“That one’s Aeos,” Porthos said, giving the other horses a jolly ruffle by way of hello. “And this one’s Phlegon,” he pointed. “Pyrois and Aethon,” he completed the introductions, pointing out the magnificent steeds.

“The horses of Helios,” Aramis said, coming up to stand by my side, his own hair covered by a heavy cowl. “Feels perfectly natural and I’m certain nothing can go wrong.”

“They won’t let us down,” I said, continuing to make my round of the horses. “Will you, equine friends?”

“They like you, cousin,” Porthos laughed, climbing into the chariot. “Of course they do,” Aramis said with a barely suppressed eye roll. “All the beasts of creation can’t get enough of him.”

“You’re bristling, chyortik,” I smiled, giving his high cheekbone a quick kiss. “Don’t worry, my love, I’m certain you will be much more comfortable in this chariot than if you were on a ship. Flittermice are very much at home in the skies.”

“Perhaps, Discord, but _you’d_ better wear a seatbelt,” he teased me back.

Porthos’ gigantic frame towered in front of us as he picked up the reins, blocking the wind while Aramis and I clung to each other in the back. The chariot jolted and began to rise and race across the skies, the hooves of the fiery steeds beating out a trail of flame across the heavens. The blues of the ocean lay calm and beckoning like sirens as we flew past, with nary a sign of the great holocaust that had been washed out to sea and now lay buried in its deepest trenches. The rocky slopes still smoked here and there from recent eruptions. Now and then flows of lava cut across the terrain, resembling bubbling rivers of blood. If we were to be gods again, I thought, what would there be left to preside in godhood over?

“Which one is Sicily again?” Porthos shouted over his shoulder, as we glanced over the sides at the outline of the approaching Apennine peninsula.

“The one that Italy is kicking in the arse!” Aramis shouted back.

“Ah yes! That one!” Porthos pulled on the reins, rearing up the horses. 

The chariot lurched, turned, and fell downwards again, causing our stomachs to leap and lodge under our very windpipes. My hood had suddenly been blown off my head and I looked up into the burning eye of Helios with my face uncovered. He had never been my enemy before, why should he be so now? The sun appeared to blink for a moment and then we dipped under a layer of a thick covering of clouds. I reached out with my hands, touching the condensed mist as it hung around us, and then, just as Hera had taught me, I unleashed a current into the cloud. It shimmered and swelled, and before long we were hidden from Helios’ view by the dark heaviness of a gathering thunderstorm.

Aramis had pulled the hood over my head again just as heavy drops of rain began to pummel us. “Thank you for the pleasant change in weather!” he shouted at me over the trumpets of the winds.

“Flight attendants, please prepare the cabin for landing!” Porthos tossed back over his shoulder as we held on for the inevitable impact.

We trudged over Sicilian hills in the pouring rain, Porthos sighing deeply and giving me the stink-eye half the time for chasing away his Da.

“Was that strictly necessary?” he huffed, no longer satisfied with the sodden state of his clothes. 

“It was your choice to join our quest,” I pointed out, with a heavy emphasis on not thinking of the reasons _why_. “We can’t exactly have your Da calmly observe us going about our business here, can we?”

“Thunderstorms are romantic,” Aramis pointed out as a flash of lightning brightened the skies around us, followed by the rumbling of thunder. I grabbed him by the hand, remembering all the times in the last six centuries that I had kissed him in the rain. Raindrops always did taste like honey when they hung off his lips.

“They are,” I exhaled, pulling him in to taste the raindrops again. He laughed into my kiss, his hands digging into my shoulder blades through the wet cloak. Porthos’ familiar presence notwithstanding, this was the first time since the destruction of Olympus that we had found ourselves away from our motley crew of immortal companions. I wasn't about to let the weather dampen my suddenly improved mood. 

“Well, I’m glad I could provide transportation to your hundredth Italian honeymoon,” Porthos grumbled. “I suddenly feel like a Grigori.”

“We’ll find some place to dry off,” I reassured him, letting go of Aramis with a soft sigh.

“I was afraid you’d suggest that,” Porthos said, fixing me with a distrustful look. “And isn’t that a mere excuse for the two of you to cuddle up to each other?”

“Since when do you object to a bit of cuddling?” Aramis asked with detached amusement.

Porthos sighed in the fashion of an overtaxed babysitter. “Athos, if I’m to woo your mother…”

“Stepmother,” I corrected quickly.

“...I must comport myself as a father to you.”

“Porthos,” I replied with a shudder I could not suppress, “we've been friends for centuries, but do not think for a moment I would hesitate to thunderbolt your balls on the spot.”

“I’m baffled at your disregard of that wonderful woman’s sweet maternal care for you,” my Titanic cousin struck a disapproving pose.

“Mmm yes, Athos,” Aramis chimed in, “and do not forget, she surely loves you double, for not only is she your sweet stepmother, she is also your dear aunt!”

“Ha ha, enjoy your raillery, you two,” I replied mirthlessly, making a mental note to slap Aramis with my cock as soon as it was decent to do so. Porthos’ appearance on the scene and his supplanting of me in Hera’s amorous designs had apparently restored Aramis’ humor as well, for it had been weeks since he'd had the gumption to make a joke at the expense of my family's incestuous proclivities. I, on the other hand, was less than charmed by the prospect of Porthos becoming an even closer relation. 

“Hera is magnificent!” Porthos, meanwhile, all but melted into a river of hearts before my eyes. “She’s beautiful, and powerful, and so _tall_.”

“She is _that_ ,” I shrugged, fighting down a strange wave of bile.

“Her grief has rendered her even more divine than ever before,” Porthos sighed wistfully, as if he had ever previously laid eyes upon my stepmother. Then again, perhaps he had. Once again I was reminded how little I knew of my cousin’s origins.

“What is it with you and widows?” I asked. “Seriously, why this weird fetish?”

“Perhaps his mother was a widow,” Aramis offered.

“You are a couple of scoundrels!” Porthos boomed with a good-natured laugh. I was pleased at least to see his bizarre sense of humor had not been dampened by the apocalypse. “Now, if I am to marry your stepmother, would that not make me your father?”

“That’s not how any of this works,” I pointed out with growing concern.

“Perhaps not quite his _father_. But his uncle, assuredly,” Aramis provided helpfully.

“There, Athos, you must respect me as you would your uncle.” Porthos struck a heroic pose.

I composed myself with the patience of a saint. I even briefly thought of Jesus, whom we left behind in France to tend to his garden with my resurrected protege, and what would he do. Would Jesus punch his dear friend of six centuries in the Titanic face, I wondered?

“Ah, we are saved, gentlemen!” Aramis declared, touching my hand. I followed his extended arm to the sight of an abandoned dwelling that still looked habitable. It overlooked a valley which was teeming with flocks of untended sheep. “We can dry off there,” Aramis placated Porthos. “And hopefully by the time the thunderstorm clears, your family would have lost sight of us.”

“I could use a nap,” Porthos stretched with an agreeable yawn.

“Do you even know where we’re supposed to go?” Aramis whispered into my ear.

“How hard can it possibly be to spot a Cyclops?” I whispered back.

The hard part, I imagined, would come when we had to convince them to aid us in our undertaking. And unlike my old mentor, Odysseus, I, for one, had no intention of lying to them about who exactly I was.

***

**Sicily**

From the window of the old shepherds’ cottage, we overlooked olive groves that spread all the way to the horizon, to where smoke billowed in grey clouds over the ravaged home of Aitna. The storm-giant Typhoeus had broken his chains and spread his monstrous wings. He had sprung from his prison beneath Etna and hurled red-hot rocks at heaven with his serpent-headed fingers. I wondered vaguely where he’d gone to; he was no longer on Sicily, for we would hardly have overlooked him as he stalked the land on his serpent legs, his head brushing the sky.

Behind me, a rumbling and thundering shook the foundations of the stone house. Porthos was taking his nap. I suspected that Hera might have been keeping him up of late, but when I voiced my conjecture, Athos used colourful language, such as he’d never use in front of Miriam, and began to rummage around for a bottle of wine. 

A cold mountain breeze drifted in through the window, carrying the smell of ozone and rain and the bleating of sheep. I shivered in my wet clothes and weaved my fingers through my hair in a vain attempt to revitalise it after exposure to rain, but all that I achieved was electricity crackling at my fingertips. The thunderstorm was fierce and my hair bristled under its influence like a cat’s.

“What is it, my chyortik?” Athos’ breath alighted on my cheekbone with the aroma of Nero d’Avola. “Why the sounds of distress?” One hand lay lightly on my hip and he raised the bottle to his lips with the other. “Do you require succour, my love?”

“You are in a frivolous mood,” I said. “How come?”

“I believe it’s because I’m reminded of La Rochelle,” Athos said pensively. “The calm before the battle. Porthos’ snores. The rain… You came to me from the rain, do you remember, Aramis? Your skin was cold and you accused me of being scratchy like a wild boar.”

“You were.” I pressed back against the familiar weight of his body and felt his hard cock grind against my arse. “Your beard is much softer when it’s a bit longer. Like this.” I rubbed my cheek against his face and he sighed.

“Kitten,” he murmured and then - gods help me - tittered when I snaked my fingers under the waistband of his trousers and teased the ticklish spot there with my fingertips. He twisted his neck to reach my lips with his, thrusting his hips lightly and persistently against me. The heat of his mouth, the slick slide of his tongue against mine, the heady flavour of dark Sicilian wine against the backdrop of the thunderstorm transported me back to our tent on the battlefields of La Rochelle. Athos cupped my chin and turned my head towards him, shifting restlessly until my mouth rested against against his neck.

“Give unto death,” he muttered, and his cock jolted in his pants.

“No,” I whispered. “I did not bite you back then. I wanted you to be strong for battle." 

“You were very restrained, my love.” His hand slipped from my hip bone and he ground his palm against my crotch. “You’re so hard for me, Aramis. How quickly do you think I can make you come?” 

“I don't recall,” I said, pushing into the practised pressure of his hand. “Did that part make it into Alex's little book?”

“Only your shenanigans with Marie did, darling.” His deft fingers unbuttoned my fly and in the next moment my cock lay in his hand, as hard and hot for him as ever.

“I'm sure it's in there, if you know what to look for.” My breath caught and I bit my lip, hard, as Athos twisted his wrist to take my hard-on into a firmer grip. I ran my finger along the line of his thumb as it circled the tip of my cock, spreading the moisture there. “Alex certainly snuck in loving descriptions of your hands, M. le comte. And rightly so, for they are beautiful.”

“You are unbearably charming, chertyonok.” The heat of his kiss left me breathless, and heat plummeted to the centre of my body also as Athos jerked me off in long, steady strokes. “Bite me, Aramis,” he murmured against my lips.

“No.” I closed my eyes and resisted the lure of his voice and blood.

“When you drive your teeth through my flesh,” he was saying in the same low murmur, “it’s as if you were fucking me. I would give my last drop of blood for you, you know that, don’t you, my love?”

“I won’t take your blood here,” I gasped as a clever twist of his hand sent sparks of pleasure through my groin. “Not until you’re back home and safe.”

“Ah,” he said, and there was deep sadness in his words. “But where is home, Aramis?”

“Belle-Île,” I told him. “It is safe, as long…”

“As long as it pleases the Titans to ignore us.” His hand flew up to my mouth, leaving my cock cold and bereft, and he slipped his fingers between my panting lips. “You taste so good, Aramis. Do you like to taste yourself?” I sucked at his finger as if it were his cock, swirling my tongue around and lapping at the tip. 

Behind him, a mighty grunt tore through the air like the sound of thunder. Porthos rolled over in his sleep.

“What if he wakes?” I whispered.

“He’ll be very careful not to.” Athos twirled me around and rutted against me, hard and needy, rubbing his hard dick against me, thrusting it into the slick heat between my thighs. One of his hands slithered under my shirt and he was pinching my nipple, tugging it until I let out a groan that he had to smother with his mouth. We dropped to the ground, devouring each other with ferocious kisses, until Athos let go of me and, showing me his teeth in a feral grin, twisted around and thrust his cock between my lips, engulfing mine in his mouth at the same time. “Come for me, Aramis,” he growled and sucked me back in, down to the hilt. I drove my cock deep into his throat, choking him, opening my mouth wider to accommodate his girth. We fell into a fast, frantic rhythm, fucking each other’s mouths with abandon. I clung to his thighs, his arse with hands like claws, my head thudded against the wooden floorboards under the onslaught of his pistoning hips. Buried deep in his throat, my cock was hot and swollen to bursting. Under my scrabbling fingers, his femoral vein distended, blood rushed through it with the speed and force of a waterfall. The pulse of his heartbeat swept me up and carried me away like a river, and then I pushed a finger up his arse and _rubbed_ , and he came with an almighty gush in my mouth. I swallowed as much as I could, but it spilled over, running down my chin, dripping on my neck and into my hair. It was filthy, choking on Athos’ come as I was, panting and writhing on the dirty floor, and his mouth tightened around me, he sucked, hard, and I bit into the flesh of his thigh to stifle my groan as my climax crashed over me and drowned out my senses.

When I came to, Athos was cradling me in his arms, his chest heaving, his mouth glued to my temple.

“Thank you,” he breathed against my skin.

“For sucking you off?”

“For coming on this mission with me.”

“I could hardly let you go unsupervised,” I huffed and winced, unstucking my hair from the floorboards. 

“Porthos would’ve been there.”

“I meant adult supervision,” I pointed out. “As much as I love him, Porthos has been behaving like a lovestruck teenager ever since he’s met your mother.”

“She’s not really my mother, Aramis.”

“That’s never stopped her.” I rolled over and closed my hand around his softening cock, kneading gently, watching his face as I did so. Those large, liquid eyes. That generous mouth that glistened filthily. I tasted myself on him when I kissed him, and he sucked in my tongue, pulling me on top of him, pulling me in, stealing my breath and rendering me dizzy.

A loud grunt startled us and we broke apart, wild eyed and utterly, disgustingly dishevelled.

“I think daddy dearest is waking up,” I whispered.

“Do not,” Athos’ head shoot up and he tugged at my lip with his teeth, “call him that!”

“Uncle, then,” I said. “Your new paterfamilias.”

“Is it safe to open my eyes?” Porthos’ bleary voice echoed through the room. “Or, as a lady would say: are you two decent?”

“As decent as we’ll ever be,” Discord said, grinning at me.

“I feared as much,” our Titanic friend sounded desolate. “But I can’t smell any blood, so it can’t be very bad.” He sat up, pointedly not looking in our direction, and began stretching his long limbs. “Say, Athos, before we go on - how about catching a sheep or two? You two lovebirds might survive on ambrosia and sweet nothings, but I feel decidedly peckish. It wouldn’t be wise to meet the Cyclopes on an empty stomach.”

“Why?” I asked, tucking myself back in surreptitiously and wiping my mouth with my handkerchief. “Would you be tempted to eat them?”

“You might think that’s a joke, Aramis,” Porthos said very seriously. “But ever since I rejoined my fam and came into my full legacy, I’ve eaten some interesting things. I’ll tell you about it one day.” He slapped his stomach lustily. “Now, my friends, let us have dinner. I’m sure Athos has ferreted out the wine in this fine establishment.”

***

In a long-forgotten cave on the Sicilian mainland, a sleeper stirred, roused by his mother’s shuddering sighs. Long did they sleep beneath the rocks and the soil, long did the roots of the cypress trees hide the entrance to their forgotten dwelling. The sleeper coughed, sending soot and dirt scattering about, stretching his limbs until one giant foot connected with another equally giant skull.

“Oy,” grumbled Argis, who had been unceremoniously kicked awake. “What gives?”

“Mother is angry,” replied Vrontis and stretched the rest of his slumbering limbs. 

Another rumble across the cave resolved into the sounds of cracking bones and popping joints, until a third voice joined his brethren. “Hungry,” said Steropis rather succinctly. 

By the time the three brothers had moved the ancient stones out of the way to stumble out of their cave, their single eyes blinking in distrust in the direction of the setting sun, the waters had retreated from the coast of Italy, leaving only the stench of marine death and human terror in their wake.

“Olympus has fallen,” sighed Vrontis. “Looks like our brother Kronos is at it again.”

“What year is it?” asked Argis.

“Who cares,” muttered Steropis. “ _Hungry_ ,” he emphasized, looking up the hill towards the abandoned dwellings of the local mortals. 

“Who cares, you thunder-dolt?” Argis threw a rock at his slow brother. “We sided with Zeus in the last uprising. And by the prickling in my eyeball, I know he ain’t among us no more.”

“Ouranos’ balls,” thundered Vrontis, casting his eye out towards the arid horizon. “Don’t tell me I woke up from my deep and pleasant repose only to be thrown into fucking Tartarus. The sleep of oblivion is insulting enough. No one cared, no one appreciated what we did for them.”

“Who? The Olympians?” Steropis asked, scratching his giant head.

“Bloody humans,” Vrontis snarled looking towards the abandoned dwellings. “For centuries we tended their flocks and protected them from monsters.” He sighed, remembering the glory days, until a rumble in his belly jolted him from his reveries. “You think there are any of them left to eat?”

“ _Now_ you’re talking,” Steropis perked up.

“All I see is sheep,” Argis pronounced, clambering up to the top of the hill beneath which they slumbered. “I suppose we could always eat the sheep.”

“The more things change, the more they stay the same,” Vrontis shook his head. “And to think, Cousin Prometheus sacrificed himself to bring them fire. What nonsense! Didn’t we tell Zeus to keep those monkeys in the dark? As soon as they learned to rub sticks together, it was all over. Ingrates, the lot of them.”

“I don’t suppose we can catch one and torture them, for old times’ sake?” Steropis sighed with longing.

“You can torture the first one you see,” Vrontis patted his brother on the back with firm reassurance. “Let’s just make sure that brute Kronos doesn’t find us first, or he’ll make the sufferings of Prometheus seem like a mediocre bacchanal.”

“How do we do that?” asked Steropis.

“I ain’t the brains of this family,” Vrontis shrugged and looked about for his brighter brother. But Argis was already on the other side of the hill, herding the sheep.

***

We traveled by night over the rolling hills of Sicily. Now and then, the bleating of a sheep or a goat told us we were on the right path. Hera, despite what my beloved companion’s reservations were about her, had not steered me wrong since the fateful day of Olympus’ fall. 

“They used to be the gods’ shepherds, and you shall find them by following the call of the sheep,” she had said. “Follow the sheep, very good,” Aramis sniped next to me, his walking staff connecting with the rocks under our feet with Merlin’s fury. “Like the lambs to the slaughter, then? Why should we even take precautions?”

“Are you going to be muttering to yourself the entire time we’re doing this?” I wondered aloud.

“Say the sheep do lead us to the Cyclopes. Have you thought what you’re going to say to them?”

I shrugged. “Greetings?”

“Perhaps you should let Porthos do the talking,” Aramis snarled.

“I’m sorry this is all such an inconvenience for you. You could have stayed behind with Marie,” I pointed out.

“And do what? Sit in on Hera and Miriam’s knitting parties? Watch Yeshua and your catamite attempt to rebuild the garden of Eden?”

“Could’ve caught up with Vlad,” I needled him. “Try some of his excellent honey cake. Have a bite of one of his bloodbags, perhaps. Has to beat trudging through the Sicilian countryside in search of a giant of yore who may or may not try to eat you, flittermouse.”

“Your Discordian powers have always been great, but now you’re just going out of your way to vex me.”

“Would you two idiots shut _up_?”

At first, we thought it had been Porthos who had spoken, for in the darkness, we had lost sight of where our Titanic charioteer had gone.

“What is a flittermouse?” the towering form that rose up against the night sky asked. “And does it taste good?”

“Haha,” Porthos’ merry voice sounded behind us. “Hades’ balls, I think we found them!”

The shadow doubled, then tripled, and our path was blocked by three giant eyes, like three moons that shone across the gathering darkness.

“Most honored Cyclopes,” I stepped forward with a low bow. “We come bearing the greetings of Hera, the Queen of Heaven, to the three of you. Argis, Vrontis, Steropis.” I took a step back and waited while the gigantic forces before us exchanged looks and subtle grunts.

“This one knows our names,” said a dark shadow. “This one we shall not eat.”

“I thought you wanted to torture the first mortal you saw,” said another shadow.

“Would you look at that? There are three of us and three of them!” Well, that was never a good start to a conversation. I drew back and closed ranks with my two companions.

“Pah!” Porthos pronounced, stepping forward. “We are three, but none of us is exactly what you might call a mortal. And besides, it isn’t polite to eat family!”

“Tell that to gramps,” I huffed under my breath.

“I am Porthos,” Porthos declared with panache, “the Son of Helios.” With one majestic motion of his hand, Porthos produced a light that appeared to radiate directly from his palm. It illuminated the scene of our rendezvous and I blinked up at the three beings blocking our paths. Their earthen skin and buck-toothed gummy grins all crowned by a sole round orb in the middle of their hairy foreheads. They really were, well, Cyclopes. “This here is Athos, he’s the Son of Zeus.”

“Haha! Son of Zeus!” one of the Cyclopes laughed. “Zeus hasn’t made any children in eons! Plus, he’s puny.”

“I’ve been around for some time,” I stated, resolved not to take offense. “And I assure you, like it or not, Zeus was my father.”

“Prove it!”

“How?” I inquired. 

“Do a trick!” 

I looked over at Aramis, who did not project the utmost faith in me at the moment. Other than that, he seemed remarkably calm, given the circumstances. I gestured for him and Porthos to move out of the way, before I unleashed a bolt of lightning from my hand. It landed right between the feet of the central Cyclops and cracked the rock upon which he stood.

“Is that enough of a _trick_?” I smirked with Olympian complacency.

To my great shock, the Cyclopes all went down to one knee before us.

“Son of Zeus, we hail you!” they intoned as one.

“Just go with it,” Aramis hissed into my ear. I interpreted his willingness to let other beings genuflect to me as a sign of finely tethered panic. 

“But you travel with a Titan,” the one who seemed to be their leader spoke, “and a… flittermouse?”

“Before this latest war broke out, we were comrades in arms,” I attempted to explain. “The current crisis has put some of us on opposing sides, but our friendship has persevered.” It was probably no use explaining to these ancient forces that Porthos, my good friend and cousin, had fallen for Hera, and it was the calling of his Titanic loins more than anything that had realigned his allegiance to our side.

“What can we do for you, Son of Zeus?” the leader, I had to assume it was Argis, inquired.

“Sorry our brother ate your dad,” another Cyclops whispered.

“Steropis!”

“What? Too soon?”

I bit my lip so as not to laugh. I was afraid the entire situation was about to render me quite hysterical. It was really a wonder I had not resorted to hysterics prior to this most auspicious moment.

“We need a weapon,” I finally found it within myself to continue our peculiar dialogue. “We know the first Titan War could not have been won without the weapons you had provided for my Father and his brothers. The Cyclopes and Olympians were allies in that war, which I believe should make you our allies still. Kronos isn’t one to let go of old grudges.”

“Right, he ate your dad!”

“Steropis!”

“We were hoping,” I went on undeterred, “that you could give us a weapon that can effectively kill Kronos. You must know of such a thing, if it exists, or can be conjured into existence.”

For a brief while, all that was heard was the clicking of rocks against each other, as if the Cyclopes were shuffling pebbles in their hands while given to thought. Then, a murmur, if their conspiratorial grunts could be described that way. At last, three eyes again directed themselves upon my face like floodlights.

“Aye,” said Argis. “Such a weapon can be made. Only, we do not have access to Olympian forges, so we’ll have to use what is available.”

“Tell us what you need,” I prodded.

“First, there’s a small matter of payment,” the Cyclops went on. “Your Father, as he rests in pieces…” Aramis coughed lightly behind my back to cover up his laughter. “... freed us from the pits of Tartarus. We owed him a debt of gratitude. You - we do not know. We honor your parentage, but why should we make you a weapon for free? You must give us something of great value first.”

“If it is in my power,” I said, “I will give you whatever you ask for.”

“We want the teeth of the flittermouse,” said the one I had now known to be Steropis.

“That is _not_ within my power!” I shot back, stepping forward to block Aramis from their view. “Ask me anything else. I’d rather rip off and give you my arms than _that_.”

“Don’t give them ideas, Athos,” Aramis hissed at me.

“Just the fangs,” Steropis went on. “He doesn’t need the pointy ones to eat, does he? I fancy making them into earrings. Tiny earrings, so small.”

Lightning pricked at my fingertips. “Over my dead and reduced to ashes body,” I squeezed through my own teeth.

“My god,” I heard Aramis whimper. “This is what comes of following you, after all these years. First, my hair, now my teeth! What horrors, Athos… This will be like that time that d’Artagnan accused me of being toothless, only this time he’d be right!”

I turned to face him and took his blanched face into my hands. “Baby, no one is taking your fucking teeth!” I stated and a current of electricity flashed through my eyes.

“The Son of Zeus loves his flittermouse,” Cyclopean cackles sent a shiver of rage up my spine. “He loves his _teeth_!”

“Oh shit, now you’ve done it!” Porthos pointed out, just as I turned about, my hands each brandishing a shining thunderbolt.

“I only need one of you alive to tell me what I want to know,” I said aiming each thunderbolt at a different Cyclops.

The three brothers fell to their knees once more, prostrated with their heads hitting the ground in a supplication.

“We were merely testing you!” Argis spat out in a rush of desperation. “You truly are the Son of Olympus! Put down the thunderbolts, Son of Zeus! We are here to serve you!”

I did not, in fact, put the thunderbolts down. Firstly, because I had no trust in those gigantic scoundrels. Secondly, because Hera did not exactly teach me how to put the thunderbolts _down_ once they had materialized in my hands.

“Tell me what I need to know!” I thundered in my deepest voice.

One giant eye rose off the ground and fixed upon my face. “It is true that the forges are lost to us,” Argis spoke. “But there is a weapon, an ancient Labrys, that can be forged from the combination of the trident and the thunderbolt. We had to split them into separate weapons during the first war, but if the two are brought back together, they will form the golden ax that you can use to slay Kronos.”

“How do we get those two things?” I asked.

“The thunderbolt you already have, for clearly you are the inheritor of your Father’s power,” Argis explained as shivers ran up my spine. I clenched the lightning rods in my hands and my scalp tingled from the rising of my hair. “The trident must still be somewhere in Oceanus’ domain, and there we cannot help you. But were you to bring the two together: the Labrys will be forged.”

“And then what?”

“You must strike at Kronos’ heart,” the third Cyclops, Vrontis, said with a hideous grimace that I barely recognized for a smile. “It will be useless against any other part of him. But if you pierce his heart with the Labrys, it will destroy him.”

“If you have lied to me…”

“May your thunderbolts strike us down where we stand!” Argis swore, his gnarled hand pressed against where I supposed his heart would be located.

“The Queen of Heaven, who sends you, she will attest to this,” added Vrontis. “She had been there in the beginning, when we had forged the weapons for your family.”

I turned and let the thunderbolts fly from my hand into the crashing waves of the sea below us. Oceanus too now held something I needed, and I was coming for it.

“Remember us at the outcome of the war, Son of Helios,” the Cyclopes bowed obsequiously. “And you, of course, Son of Zeus.”

“If you have told us the truth, you will be recompensed,” I promised as we turned to go.

“Wait!” I heard and halted. “Will you not tell us what he is?” Steropis probed. “We have never seen or smelled a one like him. What kind of flittermouse is he?”

I sighed, looking at my beloved’s hooded but pale face. A shiver of apprehension still ran through his coiled ligaments and set his threatened teeth on edge. My poor love. To what ends his devotion to me had almost led him.

“He’s a demon,” I threw over my shoulder. “He’s the King of Demons.”

I put my hand on Aramis’ arm and gently steered him away down the starlit path that we had taken to the Cyclopes’ dwelling.

“Can we eat demons?” I heard from the hill behind us, but I did not turn back.


	14. Astraeus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Arathos & friends would like to wish OneforAll the happiest of birthdays. We all tried to be as entertaining as we possibly can, especially for you <3

Over the sunken rubble that used to be the country of Japan, two figures clad in black cloaks moved as silently as shadows. Now and then, one would glance back to make certain the other was following, their hands would touch and they would cling to each other, silent statues standing on the rooftops of sunken Atlantis.

The Moon followed them with her eyes, the pair of lovers. She had often been a patron to all of them, lighting the silvery path to endless secret rendezvous. Obscuring her face in feigned modesty by a smattering of clouds. She had seen some things in her day that would make her brother Helios and sister Eos blush crimson like human blood.

A thought that perhaps she should give them privacy occurred to Selene, followed by another urge to reach down from the skies and flick the pair into the ocean and let her kin have a bit of playtime with them, whoever they were, shrouded in such a way in silent obscurity. But then, out of the dark, a voice called out to her, soft and silky, tugging at the strings of her lunar heart.

“Selene, Selene, my beloved!”

“Endymion!” the Moon stirred, flushed with a rush of passion. “Is it really you?”

“Zeus is dead, my beloved,” the voice of her long-lost lover responded. “I am no longer bound by endless sleep. At last we can be together!”

She was not dreaming. There he stood, as beautiful as the day that Zeus had frozen his peerless visage, and lay him to sweet, eternal repose.

“Endymion!” she sighed, stretching her silver rays towards the beloved face.

In the darkness, she heard another, more distant voice. “Pallas, Titan of Warcraft, I invoke you!” But her lover’s face kept her attention rapt, and she swaddled him up in a veil of starlight, her soul soaring and playful as she enveloped him.

A bright red flash cut across the night sky, followed by the groan of a wounded animal.

“Endymion?” the Moon startled. “Are you still here?”

“Yes, my love,” replied Aphrodite in Endymion’s voice. “Come with me, lie down with me, sleep by my side forever.”

“How I have missed you,” Selene sighed with contentment and closed her eyes in peaceful repose.

***

****Belle-Île, France, winter 2017** **

When the golden chariot touched back down on Marie's protected island, I immediately had to avert my eyes, for Hera had flown into Porthos’ embrace like a virgin in the throes of her first love’s blush, and he had twirled and kissed her with gallant gentleness that made my temples throb. Marie had taken the opportunity to distract me by greeting Aramis and myself with a warm lip-lock each.

“Welcome back, my darlings,” she beamed, caressing both our faces.

I scanned the grounds with a quick eye. “Where's Christ?”

“He left the island with the Divus,” Marie informed me.

“And the Virgin?”

“Hiding from Vlad.”

“And Vlad?”

“In the basement.”

“Good,” I concluded. “We must speak.” I nodded towards Hera and Porthos, still improbably locked in an embrace. “Whenever they're ready.”

The Grigori had set up a feast of aperitifs in the nymph’s private lounge, while I became distracted being nuzzled and pecked by Sophia, who would not be satisfied until she’d hooted her discontentment and headbutted me in vengeance for leaving her for a few days. Finally, she perched happily on my shoulder, only giving my ear an occasional, loving pull with her beak.

“She is decidedly the nicest parrot we’ve ever had,” Aramis smirked, taking his seat at the small, round table between myself and Marie as we pulled up our chairs.

I cast a look around the room, to make sure we weren’t about to be overheard by the inseminating spirit of the Canaanite god El. The pigeon was nowhere to be found.

“Well?” Hera was the first to break the silence. “Speak! Did you find them? Did you get anything that can help us?”

I decided to cut straight to the chase. “The Cyclopes said we can forge a weapon to kill Kronos by combining the thunderbolt and the trident.”

“Ah, the Labrys of the Gods!” Hera exclaimed. “The double-bladed ax that was torn asunder to make the trident and the thunderbolt!”

“Why?” Aramis inquired, looking from me to the Queen of the Gods. “If they already had a weapon that could slay Kronos, why split it up into two?”

“At the time, we had no intention of killing the Titans,” Hera replied with a faraway look. “We merely needed to weaken them enough so they could be bound.” She gave Porthos a languorous glance. “Not __all__ Titans are so terrible, you see. In some way, we too are Titans.”

“You’re just smaller because you grew up inside your Da’s belly,” Porthos said and, Hades take me, petted Hera on the head like a lap dog. My eyes… I wanted to rip them out, and throw them at my dear friend of old.

“That’s probably true, dear,” Hera cooed back.

Aramis rolled his eyes. Marie bit her tongue and succumbed to a terrible coughing fit. Behind Porthos’ massive back, the Grigori was drawing hearts in the air while throwing me impertinent looks. It took me back to a time when his lip was most acerbic, during the years I had not allowed him the use of his tongue.

I cleared my throat and attempted to resume the discussion. “Be that as it may,” I shook my head in an attempt to get the images of canoodling Hera and Porthos out of it. Sadly, they were not inside my head, but before my very face. “We are not in possession of the trident and have no immediate avenues to obtaining it.” I looked over at Marie, “I can only presume we’ve used up what little goodwill we had with your kin. If the trident is still intact, it must be among the Oceanids.”

“My kin will always parley if we have something of great value to offer,” Marie pointed out, sipping a jasmine liquor from an elegant, crystal cordial.

“This is why we wished to speak more or less privately,” Aramis chimed in. “The people in this room have been deemed indispensable.” He cast a look behind him. “Grimley’s company excluded, of course.”

“We’re not throwing my Grigori into the ocean,” I said more for Hera’s benefit than anyone else’s.

“Oh, I know the good doctor did not mean it,” my guardian prattled on cheerfully. “His quasi-Popeship would hate to fend for himself. And we all know what abysmal luck he had finding a decent servant, even when the world __was__ inhabited by people.”

“Speaking of people,” Aramis raised a brow.

“What do you suggest, flittermouse?”

“Vlad’s bloodbags,” he stated with the look of a man who was amazed none had thought of it sooner.

“Absolutely not!” Marie rose from the chair, staring Aramis down with the air of the duchesse de Chevreuse. “You know very well that I rely on Vlad’s so-called bloodbags as much as he does. Some of those girls are still quite young and nubile. I need them, Aramis!”

I smiled with the dawning of comprehension. “You’re planning on taking one of their bodies?”

“Theirs or their children’s,” Marie replied with detachment. “I am not ready yet to give up on my corporeal existence. To walk this earth, I __need__ a body!”

I don’t know why it had surprised me that Marie’s entertainment of Vlad’s ways went further than a fond indulgence. Of course, the wily nymph always had a backup scheme brewing.

“Oh, Marie, I have been so foolish,” Hera suddenly cut in. “Do forgive me. You have been such a good friend to me in this trying time, restoring me to my former powers, teaching me to make a proper cocktail, and I have completely forgotten that it is wholly in my power to recompense you!”

“In what way?” Marie asked with only a hint of distrust, while Aramis and I exchanged looks ranging from bewilderment to utter stupefaction during Hera’s outburst.

“I can make your body immortal,” Hera replied. “If, that is, you’re satisfied with the one you currently have.”

Sophia hooted in approbation while I almost fell out of my chair.

“That’s…” I stuttered. “That’s… true. She __can__ do that. It works very effectively. Especially if she doesn’t put any caveats on that deal,” I added with a frown.

“No caveats,” Hera vowed with her hand upon her breast. “Marie and I are __friends__.”

“We __are__ and I accept your gift, my generous queen,” the nymph replied with gracious bow.

Porthos lifted Hera’s hands to his lips. “You really are the best, sweet mama!”

“You say the loveliest things,” Hera mewled.

Surely, this was my punishment for far too many crimes against both gods and men. I buried my face in Sophia’s plumage and wondered where Ares was and if, perchance, he might be willing to put me to sleep for another hundred years. Could I put __myself__ to sleep for a hundred years now that I was a full god? Would a hundred years even be enough time for Hera and Porthos to get __this__ (whatever this was) out of their system?

In the meantime, the revelries continued as Porthos slapped his thigh with gusto and exclaimed, “Fantastic! That solves the bloodbag problem. We throw the last humans on Gaia’s arse into the sea. I’m certain Marie can convince her kin that such sacrifice is a worthy one.”

“I will do my best, but, Porthos, my friend, you are forgetting one very big problem,” Marie purred, resuming her seat and her drink.

“What?”

“Vlad.”

All eyes turned to me and I put my own drink down and looked to Sophia for help. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“If anyone could talk Vlad into giving up his food supply,” Aramis said with a barely suppressed smirk, “it would be you. Have faith in yourself, Athos: you talked Pontius Pilate into crucifying Christ!”

“That wasn’t as difficult as you think,” I pointed out. Now, how that obsessive-compulsive, hand-washing, spineless beaurocrat got the reputation for being a man of deep virtue, I may never know. But I suspect that Mikhail Bulgakov’s book helped.

“You __are__ his Tatic,” Marie mused.

“That makes it all the more horrible.”

“Just tell him you love him and show him your nipples,” Porthos decided to help. “It works every time,” he nodded at Hera. “I’ve seen it in action.”

I performed a gesture that the contemporary youth would have described as “facepalming.” Then I dragged my fingers down my face, half-inclined to claw it clean off.

“He’s a vampire,” I spoke with some urgency. “What do you suggest I offer him in lieu of human blood?”

“He can always drink sheep,” Aramis suggested without a hint of hypocrisy. “It’s not as if it would make his puerile brain any worse,” he whispered aside to Marie who laughed at the shared joke.

“Isn’t there anything else we can give them?” I made one final attempt. “Besides Vlad’s food supply?”

“We can give them Vlad,” Hera suggested with raised eyebrows.

My lips tightened as I looked across the table at her. With her long neck and her large eyes, she resembled an alien giraffe, with her head up in the proverbial clouds.

“Or we could give them Ares,” I squeezed through my teeth.

“You don’t mean that!” Hera’s voice was regal and cool despite the inflection at the end.

“Sadly, I must agree with the queen,” Aramis muttered with a look of disappointment. “You don't mean that.”

I finished my drink and rose. “Fine, I’ll speak with Vlad.”

Aramis rose too. “Don’t…” He walked up to me, letting his hands rest on my hips, his breath tickling my ear. “Don’t let him drink from you,” he whispered. “You care too much for him, Athos. And your emotions often lead you into doing something __noble__ and stupid.”

“Then I suggest you have a little talk with Yeshua about the virtues of literal transubstantiation,” I hissed back and quickly exited the room before I changed my mind.

***

The Queen and Mother of Many Gods had been as good as her word: Outwardly, there was no change to my body, and yet it felt different. More solid, less fluvial, heavier and clumsier. I danced across the carpet with my arms in the air like a ballerina, attempting to gauge if the change was real or imagined. The true test was still to come, and it filled me with considerable trepidation: would this new body be able to return to water? If not, I had severed my link with my kin for all eternity, like the mermaids of human tales who had given themselves to a mortal man. My human heart fluttered in my human chest and all of a sudden the red flakes of blinding panic rose in front of my eyes and my breath arrested in my throat. Human. A lump of flesh and nothing more: I, who had been a creature of waves and tides, would never again __change__.

“Aramis?” I said in a voice that was not quite my own, stretching out my arm blindly to grope around in the red-grey mist.

“Marie?” His voice was cool and clear. Even from across where he reclined on the bed, he must have noticed the sudden thunder of my heart. “What’s wrong?”

I blinked the panic away and gave him a small smile which was, well, __watery__. “I’m trapped,” I whispered. “I should’ve thought about it.”

“About what?” Aramis had raised himself on his elbows, a thin streak of black against the white linen. He was so vivid, the undead bloodsucking fiend. He had not changed since I’d first met him, and yet changed so much. His nature was as permeable as mine had always been: always absorbing, never complete, like a river that carved its path through the hardest rock, feeding on what it encountered along the way and spitting out the dead carcasses of what it no longer needed.

“Come here,” the demon said gently, stretching a hand out for me, palm-upward. “You look white as Death. I would know,” he added with a note of humour. “Come here and tell me how you are trapped?”

“This body,” I said, curling up against him, with my face buried in the fabric of his cassock. “It’s permanent.”

“Yes,” Aramis said. “That was quite the point.”

“You don’t understand,” I whispered, terrified, into his chest. “This is what I am now. I’ll never be anybody else.”

“Marie!” Aramis exclaimed, and I heard laughter simmer in the back of his throat. “You can be anyone you like. You always have.”

“I always changed. I’ve never been static. Oh, gods!” I moaned, digging my nails into his sleeve. “I’ll be like one of those nymphs born from frog and watercress-infested ponds. Stagnant and reeking of fungus and rotten eggs, like a bog witch.”

He was laughing now, his body shaking beneath me. “Marie,” he muttered into my hair. “I’ve never seen you so distressed, and I admit I am astonished. You have been granted __immortality__. Humans throughout millennia had made pacts with the devil himself to achieve just that. Though to be fair – Hera or Satan, I know which one I’d choose,” he added as an aside.

“I’ve always been immortal,” I said. “Now, I am locked in one unchanging body. How do you bear that? How does Athos?”

“It is a very good body,” Aramis said with all the charm of the cavalier. “Have you never talked with Marion about it? She had one of those.”

“Marion was always transcendental,” I said. “Her human form was light made corporeal, it was never quite the same as before whenever she returned from Fairy. It was subtle, but it was there. She’s not solid. Not in the way I am now.”

“Yes, you’re probably right. I’ve never thought about that,” Aramis said. “Athos too has always changed when he came back from Olympus. And now that he’s Discord,” there was a venomous hiss in his voice, “he seems taller and bulkier than ever.”

“You too have been growing,” I said, running my finger along the line of his shoulder. “You looked like a boy when I found you on the beach.”

“A dead boy.”

“The best kind, my dear.” I squeezed his bicep. “Your body has filled out. And you’re tall, even for a man of the 21st century. You can’t have been as tall back in the 13th.”

“Hm. It must be my healthy diet.”

“The blood of gods,” I said and traced the line of his forearm, down to his hand. “It certainly becomes you.”

The door opened and Athos strode in, faltering for the briefest of moments when he spotted my naked body cradled in his lover’s arms. In the diffused light of the winter day, he looked beautiful, with his shirt open at the collar and his brow clouded with a brood of gigantic proportions. Like a dastardly Regency buck after a night of debauchery.

“Oh look, it’s the God of Discord,” Aramis said lightly. “Did you show Vlad your nipples, my love?”

“May I ask what you two are doing?” Athos stopped by the bed and was looking down at us with eyes that were the colour of finest Armagnac when the rays of Sun hit it.

“Marie had an attack of existential angst,” Aramis said, lifting my hand to his lips. “But I believe I have allayed it.” He kissed my palm and I cupped his face, caressing his cheekbone with my fingertips and smiling up at Athos.

“Would you like to allay my fears some more, my god?”

His gaze snapped to Aramis’ face and then trailed down the length of my body. He sat down on the bed, wrapped his fingers around my ankle, carried it to his mouth and kissed my instep.

“It is a very beautiful body, Marie,” Athos said. “All of your bodies have been beautiful, but this one is truly exceptional.” He leaned in and pressed a kiss to my thigh. “Utterly stunning.”

“I know,” I said, my breath catching just a bit. “I’ve chosen it myself. But it is also,” I twisted in Aramis’ arms to grant Athos better access to the inside of my thigh, “permanent.”

“So is mine,” he said, quite predictably.

“That’s different. You’ve never known it to be anything else.”

“The nymph has always been of a tidal nature,” Aramis said. “All of a sudden, she fears she’s become a stale pond.”

“Never!” Athos exclaimed. “You will always be a torrential force of nature, Marie.”

His mouth, which had moved steadily along the swell of my thigh, arrived at the apex and stopped. His breath was hot and fast. He raised his eyes to Aramis’ face and the demon nodded, the corners of his mouth curled up in a smile, and put a hand on Athos’ hair.

“I’m sure this’ll cheer you up, Marie,” Aramis said softly as Athos parted his lips and licked me with the flat of his tongue. His soft beard scratched and rubbed against me – a delicious contrast to the gentle touch of his mouth. “Come here, nymph.” Aramis lifted my face towards his and kissed me, while Athos’ mouth began to devour me in earnest. Slick, hot tongues and lips that burned with hunger for me. Aramis’ hand cupping my breast, Athos’ hand splayed on my stomach, holding me down with gentle force while my hips jolted uncontrollably as he continued to lick and suck between my legs.

Aramis slithered down on the mattress, manhandling me until I lay on top of him, cradled between his open thighs. He was hard against the small of my back, and his hands roamed my body in long, bold strokes, caressing every curve and raising goosebumps on my arms and stomach. “You’re far too dressed, chéri,” I told him between moans that Athos’ mouth tickled out of me. “Get this cassock off you and let me feel your skin.”

“Athos!”

Athos lifted his head and I shivered at the sudden cold against my wet flesh.

“The lady wishes me to undress.”

“Of course.” Athos knelt between my spread thighs, kissed my mouth with the same fervour with which he’d been kissing my cunt, and ran clever fingers along the row of Aramis’ buttons. I did the same for him, pushing the shirt down his shoulders and baring his chest to my gaze.

“He’s beautiful, isn’t he?” Aramis murmured into my ear, flattening his palm against Athos’ chest. “After all those centuries, I have never grown tired of admiring his body. Beauty is eternal.” He kissed my cheek and trailed his lips down, parting them over the pulse point in my neck. The tips of his teeth were sharp against my skin and I shuddered; in that moment, I knew how Athos felt, for being taken so completely by Aramis must be an exhilarating experience.

The cassock flew to the foot of the bed like a titanic crow. Before me, Athos knelt topless and with his pants pushed down his hips. His cock was as huge as I remembered it, its dark head wet and inviting. I licked across it and heard a sharp intake of breath above my head. Around my hips, the grip of Aramis’ hands tightened.

“Fuck, you’re beautiful,” Athos muttered, and I did not know if he meant me or Aramis. Behind me, the demon was stirring, shifting, slithering against me, slipping his cock between my thighs and sliding its length against my cunt. I arched my back, inviting him to push in, but he didn’t. He teased me with long strokes between my legs, and from the sounds above my head I knew that he and Athos were kissing.

“This is hopeless,” I said at last, coming up for breath. Athos’ cock twitched, glistening and throbbing in my hand. “I can’t fit it all into my mouth. How do you do it, chéri?”

Aramis laughed softly and lowered himself next to me. His mouth was wet and swollen from Athos’ kisses. He’d have a kissing rash later, his skin was so very tender. When he kissed me, however, it was with the ferocity of the demon.

“I’ll show you,” he said, a wicked glint in his eyes and smile.

“I was hoping you would.”

Above us, Athos groaned and threw his head back. Aramis’ mouth had enveloped his cock, sinking deeper and deeper until it almost disappeared. Aramis choked and stopped, breathing hard through his nose, and then he withdrew and licked his lips. “This is as deep as it gets,” he panted, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.

“Luckily your ass is more accommodating!” Discord snarled. Olympian flames kindled in his eyes and a faint thud reverberated at the edge of my hearing, like the distant din of war.

“You see, Marie? This is what I have to deal with,” Aramis said, supremely unperturbed at the sudden appearance of an Olympian deity in his bed.

“I’ll gladly take him if you don’t,” I said cheerfully. “I always enjoyed fucking the god-cock.”

Aramis grinned the dazzling grin of the creature of the night. “Ladies first,” he said. “Unless the God of Discord has any objections.”

“What do you think, Athos?” I said, gripping his dick harder and jerking him off with swift flicks of my wrist. “Would you like to fuck me into the mattress?”

His eyes were agleam with a dangerous light and he was smirking, eyes sliding from me to Aramis. “I’ll have you both,” he said.

“Of course,” I agreed. “But not at the same time. Magnificent though you are, you have only one cock.”

“Don’t give him any ideas, Marie,” Aramis instructed me in a stage whisper. “For all we know, he might’ve learned an Olympian trick from mumsy.”

Athos raised his eyebrows haughtily. “If you think that Hera taught me how to grow an extra dick, you are even more deluded about her than I thought.”

“ _ _I__ am not deluded about her Olympian majesty,” Aramis said. “I am, and always have been, very clear-sighted about her nature.”

“Right. You haven’t been guided by vindictiveness at all-”

“Oh dear,” I said, flopping on my back with my legs thrown open and my hand rubbing between them. “I can see I will have to get myself off while you two engage in a debate on the nature of gods.”

Two pairs of burning gazes dropped to where my finger was circling my clit, quite leisurely. I smiled sweetly and angled my hips. “Stick it in, Athos,” I said. “I want to come on your cock.”

“Oh, Marie,” he groaned, throwing himself on me and ravishing me with powerful thrusts of his loins. “You beautiful, glorious creature!”

I moaned, arching up against him, opening up to him as he fucked me with vicious abandon. In a poor imitation of Aramis, I drilled my teeth into Athos’ neck and he hissed and shoved his cock inside me so hard that my groin seemed to burst into flames.

“Oh, fuck!” I cried, clinging to him, dizzy and disoriented as my climax rolled towards me like a tsunami: inevitable and devastating. So fast, I was about to come so fast… and then Athos changed the angle and his head jerked up. Still kneeling next to me, Aramis was holding him by the hair.

“Suck,” the demon said succinctly. “Fair is fair.” He pushed his cock past Athos’ lips, watching his face. The sight restored me to my senses, the wave of my impending orgasm slowed down, and I trailed my hand up Aramis’ thigh and grabbed his arse. His hips jolted, shoving his cock deeper into Athos’ throat. I snaked my hand around and drilled a finger gently into his arse.

“If I get him ready for you,” I asked Athos. “Will you fuck him while he’s fucking me?”

For once, it pleased the God of Discord to be obliging. It didn’t take long, and he was lying spread on his back, holding Aramis in his arms as he fucked the demon with slow, deep strokes. I watched them move against each other, the demon’s back pressed into the god’s chest, their eyes half-lidded and their mouths kiss-swollen. Athos’ hands were roaming Aramis’ body, skipping over the jutting hip bones, brushing teasingly against Aramis’ hard cock as it lay on his stomach, heavy and throbbing with divine blood. I curled my fingers around it and he moaned; a soft, delightful sound like a prayer. When I licked his stomach, his skin tautened and trembled under the touch of my lips, and I moved up, dragging my nails along the flexing muscles of his thighs as he fucked himself on the cock of Athos.

By the time my mouth reached his nipple, Aramis was panting, his hips falling into a harsher, jerkier rhythm. His hand wrapped around mine, his cock slid into our joint grip, and then – nothing. He stilled, pressing down on Athos’ pelvis to keep him in place, only his chest heaved with laboured breaths.

Aramis opened his eyes and looked at me.

“Well?” he said in a low, husky voice. “What are you waiting for, Marie?”

“I was quite enjoying the spectacle,” I said, sliding along his body, throwing my leg over his hips, and adjusting my seat like a horsewoman, before I lowered myself with slow deliberation and ensconced him deep inside me. His stomach shuddered, and Athos’ hands tightened around Aramis’ hips as he held him in place.

“Ready?” Athos murmured, rolling his head and brushing a handful of Aramis’ silky locks off his face to look at me. “You will have to move. I am… rather restricted down here.”

I leaned in, bracing myself on my arms and rolled my hips against Aramis. “Can you feel it when I fuck him?” I asked Discord conversationally. He grinned and a lightning bolt jolted through me, accompanied by a groan from Aramis.

“Can you?” Athos asked.

I began to fuck myself in earnest on Aramis, driving him deeper and deeper onto Athos’ cock with each thrust, until my head spun and my groin tightened, and Aramis clutched Athos’ forearm to his mouth and tore into the vein on the inside of his wrist. The scent of fresh ichor hit me – even now, so far removed from its source, it smelled faintly of nectar. Aramis’ face changed as he drank from the divine vessel, softening into an expression of immeasurable bliss. He looked so young and beautiful, with his eyes like black diamonds half-hidden behind the lowered lashes and his soft lips parted over Athos’ wrist. Blood trickled down his chin, down his neck, even into his hair, but he didn’t mind. He was coming between us, spilling himself deep inside me, and beneath him Athos muttered his name like a blessing.

“This new body of yours, Marie,” Athos said lazily some time later, as I languished between him and Aramis, luxuriating under the skilful hands that roamed my body. “Are you sure it’s fully human? There appears to be a lot of wetness, my dear nymph.” His hand slipped between my legs and I clenched my thighs around his forearm. Aramis laughed soundlessly, showing his brilliant and only faintly blood-stained teeth.

“This is what female bodies do, Discord,” I explained. “Don’t you know anything?”

“You must forgive his divine lordship, Marie,” Aramis said, brushing a strand of hair from my face. “He never had many relations with women.”

“Unlike you, M. l’abbé,” Athos said. “I seem to remember a lengthy sequence of different conquests throwing themselves at the pious Jesuit pater back in the 17th. No doubt they thought the way to paradise was through your bed, my love.”

“How do you know how many there were?” Aramis said politely. “If I remember correctly, you were spending those years cultivating bucolic pleasures and fondling the statue of your catamite.”

“I think you’ll find he’s Yeshua’s catamite now,” Athos said, just as politely.

I could feel tempers rising around me, blood beginning to throb once again, and my mouth went dry. Those two were truly insatiable.

“Do you think Yeshua tells Tinou to eat his flesh?” I said, pensively. Behind me, Athos choked on hastily suppressed laughter, while Aramis’ eyes blazed and teeth flashed very close to my face.

“Careful, nymph!” he said with a hiss rising in the back of his throat, like an enraged kitten. “This is not funny!”

“Not as funny as Porthos shagging Athos’ mum,” I admitted. “But funny enough.”

The blissful haze was gone from his eyes; they were alert and full of a fire that I knew well. I shivered in anticipation.

“I believe, my dear comte,” Aramis said in the same dulcet tones that he used to employ as a young musketeer, “that we must find a way to, as they say, shut madame la duchesse up.”

“With pleasure,” Athos agreed, moving one long hand up my torso to cup my breast. “I believe I’ve found just the scold’s bridle that will keep her mouth nicely occupied.” His other hand had snaked between my body and Aramis’ and he enclosed the demon’s cock in a confident grip.

“Perverts,” I whispered, quite faint and shaky, as Aramis slid up on the mattress and rubbed the silky head of his cock against my lips. Athos grinned and nipped at my ear with sharp teeth.

“You love it.”

***

It was a sombre procession that moved towards the cliffs, under a sky that glowed golden and red as the region of spacetime that was the Titan who devoured stars circled the Earth, pulling celestial objects into its maws. It would not swallow Gaia, for she was his mother; the last survivors were safe from the black hole, if not from his brothers and sisters.

Deep in the waters of the Atlantic, the Oceanids stirred. They sensed blood. Their fingers rose from the foam, groping blindly as they reached the land and pulling back again. Waiting and hungry.

The Island of Beauty was grey under the radiant sky. The figures of gods and demons as they approached the waters were black shadows. First walked the General of the Jesuits, his cassock fluttering in the wind like the leathery wings of Azrael. He passed beneath an arch on which the long-perished humans had hung items to ward off evil spirits and crossed himself, raising his eyes to the face of the Titan. Behind him, silent like a tomb, strode his Godmother, whose shroud enveloped all who followed like fog. The procession walked past the still figure of the Grigori, who stood by the wayside with his hands in his pockets and a face that lacked any expression.

Vlad the Impaler came last. He carried a stake in one hand, and his face reflected the angry red glow of the sky. His mouth was very red, his eyes gleamed in the dim half-light.

“It’s time,” Marie said in a low voice, while the waters lapped at the gods’ and demons’ feet as they arranged themselves at the shore. She touched Dracula’s arm. “You must give them freely.”

Dracula snarled. The stake scythed the air and pierced the body of a girl, forcing a gasp out of her dying lungs. She would have dropped to her knees, but the Impaler held the stake in a firm grip, keeping the body upright as it convulsed in death throes. His nostrils flared; his thirst for blood spiralled and his fangs gleamed like ivory behind snarling lips.

“We must give them to Oceanus,” Marie said, warningly.

He dropped the sacrifice and turned on her. “I know!” he snarled. “I am giving them.”

One of the other humans half-turned around to look at him with eyes that were almost clear, but they were firmly in his thrall. Dracula waved a hand imperiously. “Go inside,” he told his humans. “Go swimming. Shoo!” He rolled the dead body over the water’s edge, and instantly the hands of the Oceanids grabbed it and cradled it, rocking it gently in undulating waves, while blood spread around it like a mantle.

Marie held out her hand to the General of the Jesuits. He drew a line across her palm with his thumb and then pierced it with the blade of his knife, cutting almost down to the bone. Marie clenched her teeth, sank to her knees and pressed her palm to the face of the waters.

“This body is human now,” she said. “Take its blood. Take me, my sisters of old, and return me back to land, for I can no longer live among you.”

“Are you sure you can trust them?” Athos asked. For a moment, the armour of Discord faded and he looked just a man.

“I have no choice,” Marie said. She looked up at Aramis and smirked. “Pray for me, my father.”

The waters reached up in one long wave and swallowed their wayward daughter, like they had swallowed the human sacrifices.

For a moment, there was nothing but silence. The General of the Jesuits was staring intently at the spot where the skeleton woman stood with her scythe, red light reflecting from her skull. Then, there was a rumble. Porthos cleared his throat.

“That was a very nice trick you did there, poppet,” he said, patting Hera’s arse. “But you could’ve waited until this was sorted out before giving her a solid body.”

Vlad had turned away from the ocean. He walked away from the group, sank down on a rock and wrapped himself in his cape. Aramis and Athos exchanged a look. Now that the sacrifice was done, they both looked quite human again, despite their vestments. Human and young: mere god and demon poised to challenge eternal forces of the universe.


	15. Pallas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in postage, Audience! We were both having our own personal Hellpocalypse for the past few weeks. Hopefully this was... um... worth the wait? ;)

The great bull from the sea was dead. In his stead, the stallions of foam and surf galloped towards the coast on Oceanus’ behest, their bodies stygian, sleek and amorphous like mercury. They carried in their wings the drowned body of the nymph, and as their aqueous hooves thundered on land, she rolled to the ground. She looked very small and very white; I had seen many drowned men in my time, but none of them had been a friend. Drowning had been reserved for enemies.

“She’s not breathing.” There was an edge to Athos’ voice. The armour of Discord did not so much as flicker around his chest, and his eyes were huge and black.

As I sank to my knees next to Marie, I cursed the catamite under my breath. Were it not for him and his fancy to build a new Eden in the salt marshes of the Bretagne, Jesus would not have left; he’d be right here, saving Marie’s life.

And so it was on me to bring the nymph back by the pathetically human application of first aid. When I succeeded, when she coughed and spluttered and retched up lungfuls of sea water, I could have wept with relief. Grimley wrapped a woollen blanket around her, and I cradled her shivering body in my arms, rocking her gently, searching her hand with mine. Her fingers were clenched so tight around the handle of the trident that it seemed rigor mortis had already set in.

“Marie,” I whispered into her drenched hair. “Let go.”

“This fucking body,” she coughed, shuddering and clawing at my arm. “Useless lump of flesh. Almost killed me. I couldn’t _breathe_ , Aramis!”

“It’s all right.” Athos had thrown himself to the ground on her other side and was clinging to her, shaking as if her tremors had infected him. “You’re safe. You did it, Marie!” A note of Discord crept into his voice. Against the cold metal, my fingers met his as we both groped for the trident. He dragged his thumb along mine and wrenched the weapon from Marie’s hand. Already, electricity crackled along the length of metal. Athos shot me a fleeting glance over Marie’s body, and Discord rose, holding the trident aloft in defiance of the black hole that hovered in the sky like a Titanic bird of prey.

In a flash of gold, the armour of Discord materialised around him. The mantle of Discord billowed like liquid velvet, a helmet obscured half of his face, and thunder rolled and roared and struck at the sky like Artemis’ own arrow. Like the spear of the Archangel Gabriel.

A low mutter reached my ears. “We should give Kyrios some privacy. He is having a moment.” Grimley’s hand alighted on my shoulder, tugging gently yet urgently. But I couldn’t avert my eyes from the sight of Athos in full Olympian regalia and glory (though, mercifully, not flashing his genitals for everyone to see).

“Oh Poseidon,” Marie whispered with white lips and chattering teeth. “He _is_ a god.”

Through the glow that surrounded Athos like a halo, I saw Hera: tall and regal, her head raised proudly, Olympian fires reflected in her eyes. Her mouth was twisted in a smirk that was both cruel and tender as she watched the God of Discord channel the power of Olympus.

Thunder rolled. Lightning shot through the air, tearing through the mist; tearing through the fabric of reality. It was a power not of this world that churned and raged on the rock in the Atlantic Ocean. For a moment, Trojan flames blazed so brightly that they outshone the corona of the devouring Titan whose maws gaped in the sky.

Lightning spiked. The trident glowed white-hot, and then darkness unfolded behind and around Athos and the black wings of Discord swung out sideways, enclosing the light like an _ajour_ lampshade from Hell.

“Fucking hell,” Marie whispered.

I let go of her, shook off Grimley’s hand, and strode off, past Vlad who huddled on his rock. He hadn’t even reacted to Marie’s return to land and life; no doubt the prospect of living off sheep was more daunting than we’d expected.

A final flash of lightning surged towards the sky like a challenge, and murky twilight reigned once again, illuminated by the red glow from above. Despite all my efforts, Athos had come into the legacy of his sister Discordia. He wielded his Father’s ancient weapon: the golden Labrys of the Gods.

All of a sudden, my fangs tingled. Before I knew why, I swirled around, just in time to catch another flash of Olympian light. It poured over the sand like a torrent of blood. The din of war, a sudden gust of terror and fear, a lupine shadow flitted across the sand.

The familiar sound and smell of War assaulted my senses. My fangs pierced my lower lip, my hand clenched around the cross that hung around my neck until blood sprang forth. I turned on my heel and walked away from the field of battle.

***

“You have the Labrys,” said the God of War, “and I see your apotheosis is complete.”

His brother stood before him, attired in gold, eyes radiant with bursts of lightning. Behind his broad back, a pair of black wings expanded proudly against the cerulean skies.

“I hail the God of Discord,” Ares said, stepping forward with his shield held aloft. “You left me asleep for far too long upon Olympus. Together, we might have been magnificent.”

A thunderbolt rend open the air between them and Ares deflected it with his shield, his upper teeth bared in a laughing snarl.

“How dare you come into my presence!” Athos’ voice boomed with the power of thunder. His giant wings beat against the air, lifting him off the ground, where he hovered like a magnificent avenging angel, replete with the golden sword he held brandished and ready to thrust into Ares’ heart. Ares had never seen his brother more beautiful.

“I brought you a gift,” Ares replied, setting his own sword and shield upon the ground.

“Pick up your sword!” Athos commanded. “Damn you, Ares, you _will_ face me like a man, or fall like a dog!”

“You would not strike an unarmed man,” Ares smiled, not moving to rearm himself. “Odysseus taught you better than that. Flames of Tartarus, I _myself_ taught you better than that!”

“I had once been an unarmed man,” Athos hissed from on high, “disarmed by you, laid bare, and you had destroyed me!”

“I loved you!” the God of War shouted into the skies. The wings beat against the lift of the wind, blocking out all light, while above their heads the gathering thunder clouds teemed pregnant with rain. “I desired you,” Ares continued. “I wanted you for myself. I saw what you could be, and I made you in my own image. If I had committed a betrayal, it was of my twin sister, but not of you. Never of _you_.”

“You took everything from me, to make me your weapon. Now reap what you have wrought!”

Ares barely had time to grab his shield and roll across the hard ground while thunderbolts rained down upon him. His pulse quickened with the joy and excitement of battle. He saw the glory of Olympus reborn in his brother’s glowing, golden form. He was Discord, yes, but he was also Rage and Retribution, the sound of thunder and the din of battle all at once.

“Pick up your sword and face me, you cur!” Athos’ voice boomed as he alighted to the ground, mere steps away from where Ares had crouched behind the protection of his egis. The God of War reached into the satchel he had obscured beneath his cloak and let a gigantic eyeball roll out towards his brother’s feet. It stared up at Athos accusingly.

“What’s this?”

“My gift for you, Discord. The eye of the Titan of Warcraft.”

Athos lowered his sword. “Pallas? The one responsible for Athena’s demise?”

“The same,” Ares replied from behind his shield. “I've told you that I was reared by a Titan, schooled by him in the arts of war. No one alive knows their weaknesses as I do. I have tracked him down and shown the Titans that they too can still be killed. And now, you have the ultimate Cyclopean weapon, brother. I have returned to fight by your side.”

“Fight me, Ares, you fucking coward,” the God of Discord hissed. “Stand up and _fight_ me, gods damn you!”

“We _are_ the gods, brother,” Ares sighed and rose off the ground, one hand loosely holding his shield. “If we kill each other, who will fight the war on our behalf?”

“There is no _war_!” Athos roared in his face. “There is just death and oblivion. That is all that any of us deserve in the end.”

“And I didn’t let you have it. I stole your glorious death from you, and for that I beg your forgiveness,” Ares replied, throwing down his shield at his brother’s feet. It rolled next to the eyeball that lay staring emptily into the turbulent skies. “But I will not apologize for making you a God. Kill me then, if you must. Strike at the core of me, like you did our sister.” Ares tore open his cloak and unbuckled the straps on his armor, letting it fall to the ground and exposing his naked breast. “Go ahead then, avenge yourself, brother.”

“Is _that_ where he learned to do that?” a jocular voice cut through the heady tension as the two brothers faced off.

Ares looked towards the sound of the newcomer’s voice. “Ah, your pet Titan, come to witness your final triumph,” he said with a smile. “Of course, how appropriate.”

The sword of Discord glimmered with streaks of lightning as it pointed without trembling at Ares’ chest. If he was going to die, at least he would be meeting his end at the hands of another Olympian, not some filthy Titan. He would look his vanquisher in the eyes and know the oblivion that his brother had spent so many centuries chasing.

A piercing shriek rose up as if from the very earth, making both brothers turn. “Don’t kill my son!” Hera had fallen to her knees, her hands clasped in desperate supplication. “Kill me if you must have your vengeance, but let Ares live!”

Athos lowered his sword, the wings folded back and disappeared behind his shimmering mantle. He took two steps towards Hera and pulled her up off her knees, letting his thumbs wipe away the stray tears that had burst from eyes in a fit of maternal supplication.

“I could never kill him, Hera,” he whispered. “And he and I both fucking know it.” He placed a chaste kiss upon his stepmother’s forehead and walked past all those gathered back towards the gate of the residence, the mantle of Discord disintegrating layer by layer as it billowed in the wind behind him.

“Hera, my darling,” Porthos declared, pressing his hand against his heaving chest. “I am telling you sincerely, I have never been more in love!”

***

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

At the sound of the mellow, teasing voice, the Bishop of Vannes whipped around from where he’d been sitting, gazing across the sea towards the old seat of his power. The wind tore at his hair and the long, black cassock of the Jesuit flapped around him like Discordian wings.

“You!” he said, curling his lips and narrowing his eyes. “What are you doing here? Weren’t you supposed to do some light gardening on the mainland?”

Jesus flopped down on a rock and pushed his windswept hair from his face. “Is this the way to greet your Saviour, your Excellency?”

“You are not my saviour,” the bishop snarled, eyes and teeth blazing. “You did nothing to prevent this… to save me – or any of us – from _this_.” He made a wide, sweeping gesture, and Jesus’ eyes followed the motion of his hand and alighted on the patch of sand where the God of War had confronted the God of Discord not long ago.

“We saw the lightning from the land,” Jesus said calmly. “I came over to see if there’s anything I can do. Antinuous,” an irrepressible smile curled the corners of his lips as he spoke the name, “asked me to.”

“Yes, I bet he did. That boy is sweetness and mildness itself,” said the bishop, and sarcasm dropped off every word like blood off his teeth.

“He has a good heart,” Jesus said. “And he knows how to love.”

“It’s his job.”

Something flashed in Jesus’ eyes. “Careful, your Excellency,” he said. “I don’t like what you’re implying.”

“Oh I forget, you always had a soft spot for whores,” the bishop snarled, enraged beyond all measure, as a thunderclap reverberated across the island. The fire of a lightning bolt scythed through the air and flashed in the cross around the bishop’s neck.

“Antinous has been beloved by many,” Jesus said in the voice of the Metatron . “Have you?”

Aramis blinked. “Athos loves me,” he said, staring at Jesus with eyes that were black like the pit of Hell.

“Then why are you so angry?” Jesus said. “Why do you resent Antinuous and the love he’s capable of giving,” again, a smile escaped him despite himself, “if you, too, have the love of your beloved?”

“Athos has become the God of Discord, as I’m sure even you must’ve noticed.”

“And that worries you?” Jesus smiled a sad little smile. “I understand. Those Olympian deities were never good at unconditional love. They don’t understand the idea of devotion, let alone self-sacrifice.”

“Oh, he’s good at sacrifice,” Aramis’ voice was like dandelion milk. “Any day now, he’s going to channel you and try to die for our sins.”

“Maybe that was always his destiny.” Jesus’ gaze dropped to Aramis’ chest, and the bishop’s hand came up and covered the crucifix there. “It is the End of Days, your Excellency. We have to do what is necessary to save-”

“Save whom?” Aramis snorted. “There’s no-one left.”

“You mean there are no _humans_ left,” Jesus corrected him with his infuriating gentleness. “Humans were not the only living creatures on Earth. You know better than I do that many of the old pagan deities have woken, you met them on our journey.” He cleared his throat and asked in a deliberately casual tone: “Did you meet any vampires?”

“No.” Aramis ground his teeth. “Dracula and I appear to be the last ones around here. These western vampires are like inbred Habsburgs,” he wrinkled his nose in disgust. “They honestly trained themselves to burst into flames in daylight and to depend on human blood to survive.”

“Unlike yourself,” Jesus said, smiling again. “You must have changed so much, and yet keep up the old ways.”

Aramis shrugged. “I grew stronger, not weaker. That seemed the reasonable thing to do.”

“What are you going to do with all that strength?” Jesus asked. “The blood of gods runs through your veins, Monsieur L'Evêque. Do you plan to take an advantage of that?”

The bishop showed him his teeth in a deadly smile. “Are you offering?”

“I came to earth to spill my blood for humans,” Jesus said. “Antinous,” the note of warning was back in his voice, “did not.”

“Don’t worry on that account. I’ve already promised Athos to leave that particular forbidden fruit alone. That apple is not mine to take.”

“Why are you so angry with _him_?” Jesus whispered. “Is it really just because your lover loved him, once upon a time? Before you were even born? Let go of that anger, Aramis. Let go of your jealousy. _A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones_.”

Aramis hissed in a mouthful of air. “ _For jealousy arouses a husband’s fury, and he will show no mercy when he takes revenge_.” He smirked. “I, too, have read the proverbs.”

“ _Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud_.”

Aramis raised his eyebrows and pushed a strand of hair back. “Did you say that? Or was it one of your, _ah_ , disciples?”

“Corinthians,” Jesus said succinctly.

“Well. Let me tell you one thing, _Yeshua_ : you can find _anything_ in the Bible, anything to justify your own agenda. I know that for a fact, because I have done that.”

“Of course you did.” Jesus looked him up and down. “You were a Jesuit.”

“The General of the Jesuits,” Aramis said haughtily. “I could’ve been Pope.”

“Dear old Peter,” Jesus muttered. “How it saddened him to see what kind of men sat on his throne, _pissing_ on his legacy.”

“They’re gone now.” Aramis’ voice was diamond-hard. “They’re all gone. It’s only us. And soon our numbers too will dwindle, once the God of Discord falls prey to his notions of _honour_.”

“Stop him, then.”

“I can’t,” Aramis whispered with white lips. “He’s severed his ties and torn himself away from me. He summoned War into our midst.”

“It was my impression, Aramis, that you always rather enjoyed war.”

“Not like that!”

“Not when you might experience loss for a change, rather than just inflicting it? I see.”

“Is this it, Yeshua? Are you here to mock, to tell me that I am getting my comeuppance after all this time?” He hissed like an angry cat. “And here’s me thinking that forgiveness was your thing. Well, well, well, looks like we’ve all read the Gospels wrong.”

“If you read the Gospels, you might remember that I was to judge the living and the dead,” Jesus said. “And you, my friend, are both.”

“I was under the impression that you’ve already done the judging and separated the sheep from the goats. You took the _sheep_ with you when you left to build yourself a new paradise.”

A retort trembled on Jesus’ lips, but he swallowed it. His fists unclenched and he stood, stepped in front of the bishop and raised his hand to his brow. “Blessings be upon you, my son,” he muttered. “You didn’t want to bless me, but I have no such reservations.” A soft flicker of warmth settled on the bishop’s skin, like a fleeting kiss, and sent tendrils of warmth through his body. “His sacrifice will put an end to war,” he said. “And this is what you want, isn’t it?”

He turned away and walked down to the beach. The bishop watched him step on the waves that calmed as his feet touched them. Jesus turned around one last time, and the smile was back on his lips. “The sky is calm again,” he said. “Just as my beloved’s breath when he lies sated upon my bosom. The sea whispers in waves as soft as my beloved’s curls.”

Aramis groaned. He sank to his knees, head bent, his face in his hands, and remained like that for a long time. A touch to his shoulder startled him.

“Why the pose of despair?” asked Miriam. She looked out across the sea. “Is it because you had to say goodbye to my son? Don’t worry, Yeshua is always with you, in your heart.”

“I’m scared, Madame!” Aramis stared up at her with huge black eyes. He pressed his hand to his mouth, as if shocked that the words had erupted from it.

“I know, my boy.” She stroked his hair. “It will be over. Have faith.”

Suddenly, he stood, shaking off her hand. “I’ve had faith all my life,” he said, whipping the words out like a blade. “And a fat lot of good it did me.”

He shot a glaring look up at the sky, at the fringes of the black hole that shimmered above the horizon where the devouring Titan had betaken himself. “The blood of gods flows through my veins,” he muttered under his breath and set off towards the citadel in long strides. “And only a god can kill a god.”

***

The cellars of Citadelle Vauban were becoming depleted. For once, I was grateful for Christ’s company, for soon I would have to resort to asking him to turn the ocean water into wine. If that is, I could even tear him long enough from the place where I had personally ensconced him: Tinou’s jock, as the kids said while the kids were _alive_.

I was eyeing a bottle of a ten year old Chateau Margaux, which I’m certain the prior, human proprietors had been saving for a special occasion. Well, if this was not it, I did not know what would be. I reached for the corkscrew as I let the soft candlelight illuminate the label underneath my fidgeting thumb.

“You’re not going to drink that alone, are you?” A soft growl reached me from the doorway.

“Whoever told you to come here after me is no friend of yours, Ares.”

His shadow flickered in the candlelight across the wall. “If you were going to kill me, you would have done so already,” my brother pointed out as he strode into the room and straddled one of the wooden stools. His thighs fell easily open, as if he had sat astride a battle steed, naked and glistening in the soft glow of the melting candles.

“What have you done with Aphrodite?” I asked, tearing my gaze away from the cradle of his groin and plying the corkscrew to the expensive vintage.

“Left her out of harm’s way, but within reach,” Ares shrugged. “She had hunted Pallas with me.”

“Did she?” I mused. “Or was it _you_ who hunted Pallas with _her_ , brother? You _always_ come when she calls.”

“You watch your mouth, puppy,” he hissed with darkened eyes.

“Or what?” I twirled the stem of a delicate wine glass between my fingers.

“Or I might be tempted to remind you I know all your tricks as well as you know mine,” he replied evenly.

“Why did you come here?” I asked, placing two glasses on the bar.

“After we had killed Pallas, we were hunted. On a night we had sheltered in a temple of Kali, we heard the news that Gaia had been summoned at this island. We remembered this was where you had been headed when last we met and suspected it would only be a matter of time before the Titans came for you here. I wanted to be with you for the battle ahead.”

I filled the two wine glasses with the blood-colored liquid, pushing one towards Ares as I settled across from him on my own stool.

“What did you do to piss off the Earth Mother, brother?” Ares smirked, sniffing at the wine like a suspicious dog. I too allowed my nose to take in the aroma, letting it wash over me, creating a warm memory I could always access in the future, in the eventuality that all Yeshua might produce in the end would be a glass of Manischewitz.

“Took back her sacrifice,” I shrugged, sipping the wine.

“The Divus?” Ares smirked. “Tell me you at least let yourself indulge before casting him aside for your _nuxterida_.”

 _Nightwing_. It burned my ears to hear him use that name to describe Aramis. Aramis had been mine, that word had been _mine_. He was prodding at the limits of my tolerance, as he always did, one canine claw at a time.

“Don’t speak of either one of them,” I replied, draining my glass.

“You spoke to me of Aphrodite,” he shrugged and let the remains of his own glass empty down his throat in a single, long swallow.

“Do not mistake my willingness to share my drink with you for something more than it is,” I said, fixing him with a long look.

For someone who had come so close to expiring at the edge of my blade, Ares appeared calm and unconcerned. Whatever it was inside me that had stayed my hand, for to call it love would be too generous, and to call it friendship too disingenuous, he too had felt and seen it, as if that power had been a tangible thing. Perhaps he had put it inside me all those years ago when he had set his eyes on me and chosen me for his own, against our sister’s wishes.

“I have grown fond of human wine over the years,” Ares was saying as he poured himself a fresh glass and refilled mine. “It will be a shame to go without once all the stores are depleted.”

“Once Olympus is reclaimed, you can drink ambrosia again,” I recited like a mantra.

“Once Olympus is reclaimed,” he repeated, mulling the words over as he swirled the wine around his teeth. “As long as Kronos is alive, we cannot hold Olympus.”

“Isn’t that what we’re doing here?” I asked with growing aggravation. “Or at least _some_ of us, brother? Trying to find a way to kill Kronos?”

Ares leaned forward and his hand brushed against my forearm. His whisper was conspiratorial, “You and I both know only a god can kill another god.” I nodded and indicated for him to continue. “As far as the Titans know, you and I are the only two Olympians left alive. They have no idea you saved Mother and Aphrodite.”

“Are you thinking of using one of _them_ to slay Kronos?” I asked with apparent distaste.

“Is that the kind of man you take me for?” He drew back, but his display of offended sensibilities was momentary and soon he was leaning closer to me again. “What I mean is, it is up to one of us to take down Kronos. You and I: one of us will have to sacrifice himself so the others can live, and reclaim Olympus. You know as well as I do there is only one way to pierce the heart of a Titan.”

“We must strike at his heart from the inside,” I said, finally putting it together. “And then what?”

“And then? Poof!” Ares opened his fingers in a burst of an imaginary flame. “And whoever is inside him at the time - also poof, so to speak.”

I swayed back, letting my head hit the shelf behind me as I slowly contemplated my glass of wine. “What would you do?” I asked. “If you and Aphrodite were to go back and repopulate Olympus. Would you do it differently than how our Father did it?”

“Well,” Ares replied, studying my eyes, “For one thing, I suppose there would be no humans for me to fuck…”

“Father made the humans,” I pointed out.

“Did he?” Ares laughed. “That part was ever not so clear to me. You see, there are just so many versions of that story, even I have to admit to getting lost in what’s fact and what’s fiction. Plus, on my travels, I met a Northern God who also claimed to be the All Father. And then there is the One God of your Nazarene…”

“Enough,” I stopped him. “I get it, you don’t want to answer my question.” I sighed and drained my glass, which Ares promptly refilled. “You are who you are, and you will do what you do. And despite everything you’ve done,” I said, spitting the next words out as if they tasted bitter on my tongue, “I cannot help but be _fond_ of you.”

“I seem to recall there were quite a few nights when you gladly took what little comfort I knew how to offer,” he replied without any apparent bitterness. “When I had come to you and you lay with your face buried in my shoulder, not willing to let me see you cry, for fear that I might know your heart was bleeding.”

“Don’t,” I stopped him, shutting the floodgates upon the memories he had been summoning. He too did not forget, my wily maker. “There were entire centuries when I had gone without even laying sight upon you. Do not pretend that you cared for me.”

“Time passes differently on Olympus, I do not need to tell you that.”

“Then don’t,” I cut him off sharply. “Be glad of what little I admitted and do not proclaim that I was ever more to you than one of your Dogs of War.”

“You don’t believe me,” Ares said with surprise softness, his fingers lingering over my own as he pressed my glass back into my hand. “And I don’t blame you, I know you’ve survived a lot of betrayal in your life, and even more pain than that. And if I were you, I would have closed my heart to love forever. But not you.” He smiled sadly at me and refilled his own glass with the last dregs of the Chateau Margaux. I drank, lifting the glass to my lips with a shaking hand, despite the wine beginning to go to my head in a pleasant rush. “You don’t believe me, but I have never lied to you. I have always tried to shield you when you needed protection. To guide you when you needed guidance. To watch over you no matter how far. Even when you no longer served me, not from any _use_ of you, but because I loved you. Perhaps my love isn’t as pure, or as lofty, or as all-consuming as the love you need, but it is love nevertheless. And you have it, brother, freely given.”

He moved closer to me with each word, like fog over water, until he had somehow enveloped me and my body yielded.

“Do you want it?” Ares asked. His breath tickled my lips like the licks of a flame. The God of War was asking for my explicit consent, I mused. Now I really _had_ lived long enough to see everything.

I lowered my eyes to his lips. There had been centuries when I had not laid eyes upon him, but there had also been centuries when his touch was all I knew, and it had set me aflame like a phoenix risen from my own ashes.

“Oh, what the hell. One of us is destined to die, you say,” I responded and reached my arms to clasp them behind his back and pull him bodily towards me until our lips collided and my eyes closed.

His caresses were surprisingly soft and he licked into my mouth like a starving man attempting to taste me. “How can we be one without the other?” he whispered warmly. “War and Discord.”

We tumbled from our seats, he pulling me towards the couch in the back of the bar, I tearing at the garments that still clung to our bodies. “Are you saying you’d actually miss me if I were dead?” I asked in between nibbling my way down from his earlobe to the tight, corded muscle of his shoulder.

“When have I ever been all right with you being dead?” he growled.

“Fair point,” I laughed and threw him down onto the corner sofa, climbing into his lap as his hands roamed over the exposed planes of my body and his eyes traveled in appreciative lines to take me all in.

His cock rose up, hard and proud, in between my thighs as I rocked back and forth in his lap. His body was burning, but it had ever run hot, the flames that kindled in his eyes ran deep, and the touch of his hand was far from indifferent on my skin. My body remembered him. There was a melding to this, a strange homecoming, even if home was never a place of safety.

“You will probably name one of your new whelps after me,” I breathed into his open mouth. “Discord the Younger.”

His fingers pulled tight on my hair as he held my head in place. “Don’t talk like this. I love you too much to lose you.”

The wine buzzed through my veins like a beehive. What had I been saying? When had the hypothetical become the inevitable? Had there ever truly been a choice?

“I will go,” Ares said, thrusting up and inside me, “I’ve lived long enough. I trust for you to carry my mantle as you have carried our sister’s.”

My body was heavy and pliant and it slid down his cock with accommodating ease. I sank my nails into the heavy muscles of his chest. “You’re adorable, Ares,” I panted as I slammed my hips down meeting his thrusts. “One can almost believe that you mean what you say.”

“I do not want you to die,” he insisted, his cock swelling inside me as his arms held me close.

“Dying is easy,” I gasped as the pleasure built inside me. His hands and lips left burning bruises all over my skin and made my head spin in pleasant delirium. “I’ve died many times. I’m not afraid to die again.”

His fingers curled under my armpits, holding me tightly as he rocked steadily into me. “Dying is easy. Being reborn is the hard part. And, Athos, the curse is lifted and Hera has forgiven you.”

“You _will_ miss me,” I laughed and pulled him into another kiss. His cock pounded inside me like a weapon forged by Hephaestus himself. My entire body had become a forge for it.

“You’re so beautiful,” War moaned against my neck. _Beautiful_ , the word tore down a wall inside me, an echo of thousands of nights that bled between pleasure and pain. _My perfect warrior._ “I want to see you fall apart for me. Come for me, brother.”

My orgasm tore through me like a herd of wild horses, his cock punching the last anguished cries out of me before I sank down into the heat of his sated body, “Oh… _fuck…_ Ares… _Ares_!”

He had been right about me. I did call out his name before the end.


	16. Iapetus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After just barely making it out of our own personal Hells, we give you the final chapter, for better or worse!

Nature, in her wisdom, had found a way, just as I had anticipated. What I could not have anticipated was the vessel that she would use as the arm and scepter of this way. While we had been away in Sicily, Grimley informed me, Yeshua and Antinous simply held hands and stepped off the shore of the Island of Beauty. They had walked on water all the way back to the mainland, and that was where I was headed, not needing to walk on water myself, since I had recently acquired wings.

I walked through the blooming garden, surrounded by a halo of butterflies that wafted softly above my head, down the narrow earthen path that breathed with new life beneath my feet. From the Gulf of Morbihan to the Loire’s streaming delta, the coast was teeming with new growth as Flora and Fauna broke free of their shackles and danced in a roundelay of rebirth around their Makers.

“So, this is it?” I said, finding said Nature’s vessel beneath a blooming cherry tree. “The New Eden?”

He had a small ball of golden fur rolled up in his lap and was stroking his fingers over a pair of wily, pointed ears. I knelt at his feet like a penitent, waiting for him to speak to me.

“It’s a fennec fox,” Antinous said, ruffling the ball of fur until a triangular face appeared between the sharp hills of the fox’s ears. 

“Wherever did you find one of those?” I asked, stretching my hand out to pet the critter. “They are not native to these parts.”

“There was apparently a large animal park nearby,” he replied, pointing east in the direction of Le Guerno. “Yeshua let me pick my favorites to bring back.”

“To life?”

The fox wrapped itself around my hand like an agreeable muff and I felt tiny claws intertwine around my fingers. I stared at the compact clump of triangles and my heart swelled with joy. Such a small thing of beauty deserved to live. There was so much beauty on this planet, an endless cornucopia of possibilities. Perhaps it would all be reborn again, renewed, rejuvenated. Feral and peaceful all at once.

“Yeshua still has not given up on humanity,” Antinous smiled. “He says New Eden’s gates will always be open to them, should some other God see fit to give them life again.”

“And which one of these trees shall I be forbidden from tasting the fruit of?” I asked with an answering smile.

Antinous scooted closer to me. “No fruit of my garden will ever be forbidden to you, Domine.”

I reached out and let my fingers card gently through his thick curls. He wasn’t safe here, in his garden. Not as long as Kronos and his brothers still raged against the last death throes of the newer gods. Not as long as Oceanus could wipe this garden clean in a single breath. Not as long as the Titan War continued.

“He treats you well, doesn’t he?” I asked, letting my hand drop from his head to the soft fur of the animal still coiled around my arm.

“You would not have chosen him for me if you had thought otherwise,” Antinous replied with a foxlike look in his own eyes. “You’ve always made wise companion choices for me.”

“I want to make sure you’re well taken care of,” I admitted, seeing no sense to keep up pretenses. The foliage above our heads rustled and a soft hoot let me know Sophia had found me at last. “I… may have to go away for a while,” I said, taking his hand into mine.

“You should leave her here,” Antinous answered my unasked question. “She will also be well taken care of. I promise you, Domine.”

Hummingbirds buzzed close to our heads, their tiny beaks dipping into the narrow, red trumpets of the nearby pineapple sage. Their blooms struck me like a spray of blood upon the verdant background and I squeezed the Bithynian boy’s hand.

“Tinou, there is so much I wish that I had said to you. But it was too long ago, and it would be wrong of me to speak now the words I should have said in a different time.”

“You said you loved me back then,” he whispered. The fox stirred and uncoiled its tail from my wrist, as if sensing my apprehension. “But you love Aramis now. You have loved him for a very long time.”

“My darkness would have consumed you,” I said, still struggling to capture the right sentiment.

“And his darkness consumed your darkness?” His smile was playful and his eyes sparkled in the sunlight like agates. 

I bowed my head before his divine wisdom. “I died because of my love for him, several times,” I confessed. “Each time he brought me back and each time I loved him more. But now…”

“But now?”

“I am afraid I must go to a place he cannot follow me. And there is no power left in the world that I know of strong enough to bring me back.”

“That’s simple then,” Antinous stated firmly, “you must not go, Athos.” His hand clung to the back of my neck. “You too are welcome to stay here, in New Eden.”

I shook my head, “Sweet caterpillar, I am the snake in your garden.”

“No,” he stated with a furrowed brow that I instantly wanted to kiss.

“I was your demise twice now, and Yeshua’s as well. I have walked this earth too long, and caused too much suffering by my actions for too many. And yet, I think what’s left of this world is still worth saving.”

“He would not wish you to go. Your Aramis.”

I leaned forward and pressed my lips to his forehead. His skin tasted like spring.

“Only a god can kill another god, after all,” I said, rising from my knees. “I have killed gods before, including you, Antinous of the Flowering Heart. I shall kill another and then rest.”

His hand grasped my shin and he looked up at me with eyes like burning coals. “I forgive you,” he said. 

Two tears streamed down my cheeks and dripped upon the soil at my feet. “I was awful to you, caterpillar. I do not merit your forgiveness.”

“And yet, you asked for it!” 

I had. I spoke those words to him, not so long ago. My soul cried out for his forgiveness still. And not only his, for I was about to play Judas and betray a heart more dear to me yet. A heart not so open to forgiveness.

“Say it,” he beckoned, his hand sliding gently up my leg to rest upon my knee. “Tell me what you could not tell me before. And be forgiven.”

I leaned over to give him my hand and pulled him to his feet. Even fully grown, he still stood a head shorter than me. The god who had once been a little Greek boy I found in the streets of Bithynia. And I, the Son of Zeus and Grandson of Kronos, tilted his face up by his dimpled chin and, two thousand years too late, whispered, “I love you, caterpillar. Try to remember me.”

***

When Aramis found Athos in their room, the god smelled of fresh soil and the green leaves of spring. It was such a contrast to the acrid smell of the Atlantic Ocean and his sharp-edged winds that permeated the Island of Beauty that the vampire stopped dead in his tracks, flehming like a cat.

“There you are,” Aramis said. He did not say, _Where have you been?_ His shoulders were rigid and his face was a smooth white mask; but small cracks appeared at the edges, tautening his jawline and making his temples throb.

“Here I am.” Athos reached out a hand, palm-upwards. “Will you sit with me?”

The calm that radiated off him was a thin shroud that lay around him like the mantle of Discord. Beneath it, his blood pounded in the old-familiar rhythm. _To battle, Achaeans, to battle_. Somewhere, the Din of War was laughing the laughter of maenads.

The pull of that voice was irresistible, as it always had been. Aramis moved towards Athos, silent like death, and when he sat down next to him, he breathed in the scent of War. It lay under the scent of spring, deeply ingrained into Athos’ skin, flowing through his blood, fused with his very bones. Aramis closed his eyes momentarily, plummeting backwards through time, onto a battlefield of old that rose fully-formed within his memory. The screaming of horses and the booming of cannonballs deafened him, the heady aroma of blood enveloped him, driving his teeth out despite himself. When he opened his eyes again, Athos’ dark gaze was on him, staring straight into his souls.

“I am sorry, Aramis.” Athos lifted his hand and brushed his thumb across Aramis’ cheekbone. “I didn’t want any of this to happen.”

“Your family-” Aramis began, but Athos cut him short.

“Hush!” The thumb meandered to Aramis’ lips and sealed them shut. “Please… don’t let’s argue tonight, Aramis. I… I’m so tired.” He looked it. It was as if in addition to the mantle of Discord, he had also had the weight of the world thrust onto his shoulders by Atlas and was teetering under its weight on the brink of collapse.

Aramis parted his lips, and Athos’ thumb slipped between them and caught on the tip of a fang. Athos smiled. “Remember how I protected your teeth from the Cyclopes?” He cupped Aramis’ face with his hand. “Don’t ever forget that, Aramis. Don’t ever forget how much I loved you.”

Aramis remained silent. The words that screamed inside him were weapons that would slice and stab if he permitted them to erupt, and so he locked them up in the cauldron of boiling pitch at the bottom of his soul. His black eyes burned like coals, and Athos, who could read the signs in his sleep, smiled his ancient smile and bared his neck to the demon’s teeth.

There was nothing he could do. He exercised all self-control he possessed to keep himself from hissing his defiance and rage at Athos. The lure of divine blood was too strong and he fell head-first into the stream of ichor that gushed into his mouth, quenching his thirst and his fury. After a while, the calm of the icy lake that drowned Athos from within poured into Aramis’ heart as well, and he lay atop his god with his mouth at his neck and a hand clutching his hair. Beneath him, Athos’ cock throbbed against his groin, as it always did when he spilled his blood into Aramis’ mouth.

Aramis stirred, and the hand that lay on his back pressed down, keeping him in place. “Don’t go,” Athos whispered into the dusk. Aramis shook his head mutely and reached across the bed, tugging at a discarded bathrobe. With the speed of a serpent, he yanked out the belt and tied Athos’ wrists to the bedpost. Athos didn’t resist; he lay quite still and let Aramis manhandle him, watched him unbutton his shirt, threw his head back with a moan when Aramis kissed a path down his chest, dipped his tongue into his navel and bit into the string of abdominal muscles that disappeared in the waistband of his pants.

“I love you so much, my chyortik,” Athos murmured when Aramis pulled down his pants and sucked in his cock. Its pulse in his mouth was almighty like the heartbeat of a god. There was so much power there, coiled in the body of a man, impossible to contain. It was spilling out: in the ichor whose flow never stopped; in the radiance of Discordian light; and now also in the sweep of the wings of Discord, whose darkness enfolded him when his Olympian nature broke through.

It was not a god who lay panting in the bed but a man, and Aramis, fighting down the urge to slice every vein open with his teeth, was determined to tether him to his humanity the only way he knew how. Athos still had the capacity to give himself to him, as a man rather than as a god, and to this Aramis clung with his hands and his mouth as he sucked him with slow deliberation. The long legs flung open for him; the hips slanted, thrusting up into the heat of his mouth, the back arched, and Athos groaned as Aramis swirled his tongue around his cock and sucked him in again, deep into his throat, making himself choke. The smell had changed: it was the scent of sex that steamed off Athos, not the scent of War. Every lick of Aramis’ tongue was a victory over Ares. The pull of War might be powerful, but Ares didn’t know how to reduce Athos to a shivering, moaning heap of nerves and very, very human senses. His skin was slick with sweat and his heart throbbed as if it tried to break out of his ribcage. In this moment, Athos was his and his alone.

“I’m not going to give you up,” Aramis whispered into the moist heat of Athos’ groin, leaving small bites along the taut muscle of his inner thigh.

“I am yours,” Athos whispered back. “You know that.”

Aramis knelt up, one of Athos’ thighs slung over his shoulder. His fingertips caressed the flesh of Athos’ arse, raising goosebumps and making him shiver. Athos’ body strained against the ties, his wrists were white and the muscles in his shoulders and arms bulged. He wrapped his free leg around Aramis’ hips and pulled him in.

“What do you want?” Aramis asked, stroking Athos’ cock lazily. “Tell me.”

Athos swallowed. His lashes fluttered, hiding his eyes from Aramis’ black gaze. His mouth was swollen where he had bitten it. He was more beautiful than he’d ever been in his Discord regalia; the flames of Troy that blazed in the eyes of Discord were nothing compared to this wild, unfocused gaze when he glanced down on himself and saw Aramis’ cock glistening with lube, nudging at his thigh.

“Do it,” Athos breathed, sucking in air through parted lips.

Aramis’ mouth twitched. “Give unto death?”

“Always.”

Aramis’ hand struck like a snake. His thumb breached Athos, shoving lube inside him, opening him up with sure, practised strokes. Athos’ head rolled to the side, exposing the jugular vein that pulsated frantically in time with the thrusts of Aramis’ hand. “Please,” Athos said without looking at Aramis. “Take me.”

Aramis leaned in, slotting his hips between Athos’ legs, and pushed, very slowly, spreading Athos open for himself inch by inch. At last, he stopped and rolled his hips, pressing his stomach against Athos’ cock. Athos rolled his head back and looked Aramis straight in the eyes. He didn’t say a word, he just stared up as Aramis began to fuck him, pulling all the way back and pushing back in with methodical thrusts that took his breath away.

Aramis shifted the angle, leaned in and closed his hand around Athos’. “I’m falling,” he said, very distinctly, staring into Athos’ dark eyes. The white mask cracked and melted.

Athos’ hand twitched, his fingers uncurled and threaded through Aramis’. “I’ve got you.”

Around them, the world ended.

***

It was before first cock-crow. Aramis slid out of bed and, watching Athos sleep, dressed himself without making a sound. Athos’ arms were twisted in angles that must have been painful, but there was nothing he could do about it now. If he could, he would’ve clapped him in irons, in the deepest dungeon, to hide him from the gods and monsters that roamed the Earth, to keep him safe, forever. Since he didn’t have any irons at hand, the belt would have to do. He checked the knots before he left; it wouldn’t do for Athos to go off to do something noble, not now. Not when there was another way.

He glided out of the room and down the corridor that was full of twisting shadows. One of them morphed into the wings of his Godmother’s cloak that fluttered next to Aramis as he walked with a firm step towards the point of no return. Inside his veins, Olympian blood heaved and seethed; the blood of ancient gods, the blood of Discord. The blood that had sustained and shaped him for two centuries. Antinous had been elevated to godhood through the power of faith; Aramis had chosen a path for himself.

For immortal beings, gods required a lot of sleep. Even now, after the death of Morpheus, Athos had not shaken off the habit of sleep, and neither did Hera. Aramis was certain that Ares hadn’t either, especially if he had drunk the mulled wine that Grimley had served him on Aramis’ behest.

The dog of war. As a child, he had been slow and didn’t have any gifts that would make his parents take notice. He was given to a Titan as an apprentice, but his master didn’t have any skills either and all that he was good for was training the Olympian offspring in physical exercises. Ares thus developed powerful muscles and the conviction that war is the most beautiful occupation. When time came for him to go out into the world, he ordered an arsenal of sophisticated weapons from Hephaistos and came to Earth. In those days, humans did not know about warfare; they fought each other in amateurish ways, with sticks and with stones, and their battles were ruled by chaos and disorder. Even the most ferocious of combats resulted in nothing worse than a few bruises. Fear and the desire for their neighbours’ property were their only reasons for fighting, and it wasn’t until Ares became their teacher that they learned about heroics. They made weapons in the image of those that Ares had shown them and became soldiers. It was then that War got his true meaning. Organised cruelty and slaughter became a beautiful, honourable and worthwhile occupation. A noble death was what every warrior aspired to.

Inside his chamber, glutted on war, sex and – oh yes, wine – Ares slept. He was naked, his legs splayed open, arms flung out wide. Next to him on the bed lay an empty glass, and a red trickle of wine had run out and stained the duvet. Aramis’ nostrils flared as he sniffed the air for the subtle scent of herbs, masked as it was by the potent aroma of wine.

“Don’t think that I always resented you,” Aramis said quietly into the silence of the room. “There was a time when war gave me a lot of pleasure. But it has changed; there is no honour in war today. There is no honour in this.” He raised his hand, looked out of the window at the windswept grey land, and added softly. “This is how War ends.”

He stretched out a hand without looking and his fingers closed around the handle of the scythe that was handed to him. His skin blistered at the touch of deathly cold, but he held it in a firm grip and raised it above his head.

Ares opened his eyes.

The scythe sliced the air. It pierced Ares’ stomach with ease, pinning him to the mattress as he flailed, cutting his hands on the blade. Aramis threw himself onto War, driving the blade all the way in, pressing down on the handle to immobilise Ares. When he raised his eyes to War’s face, War was grinning, his teeth stained with blood.

“Little demon,” he said, and blood foamed at his mouth with every word. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Putting an end to War,” Aramis said, showing him his teeth in turn. They were dazzling white, gleaming in the murky light like diamond shards.

Ares’ gaze shifted away as he caught sight of movement in the shadows.

“Oh,” he said, taken aback for the first time in millennia.

“Yes,” Aramis agreed quietly, still pushing the blade into War with the weight of his body. “My Godmother has been looking forward to meeting you in person.”

“She can’t kill me,” Ares hissed, bucking under Aramis like a wayward horse, grappling blindly in rising panic, yanking at Aramis’ hair, his clothes, in an attempt to dislodge him. “And neither can you,” he spat around a mouthful of blood. “Only a god can kill a god!”

“Funny you should say that,” Aramis said still with the same terrible calm. “The blood of three gods flows through my veins. Did you know that? I am what I eat.” He leaned in and sniffed the ichor that stained Ares’ lips and chin. “If you are a god, War, then so am I.”

“Why are you doing this?” Ares asked, staring at him with wild eyes. “What have I ever done to you?”

“You took Athos!”

“He came willingly.” Ares smiled, and it was a rather sweet smile. “Oh yes, he did come willingly. And beautifully.”

Aramis slapped him.

Ares laughed and tugged at Aramis’ hair, pulling him down. “Not so pacifist as you pretend to be, vrykolakas,” he hissed. “What makes you think _you_ can put an end to War? You, who loves slaughter so much?”

“I can control myself.”

“Oh indeed!” Ares exclaimed. “You can’t even control your _fangs_ , demon!” He opened his mouth and licked across his own teeth.

Aramis smiled. “What makes you think I’m not controlling them?” he asked softly. And he struck like a viper. His teeth sank into Ares’ neck, and the God of War groaned in surprise as blood shot out of the wound in an almighty stream, gushing into the vampire’s mouth.

“You can’t kill me!” he sputtered, blood bubbling from his mouth, surging from his neck and stomach. “You… can’t…”

Aramis drank. His head spun, and blood-red sparks exploded in his skull, the taste of the battlefield filled his mouth, smoky and intoxicating; the din of war reverberated in his head and his veins. It thrummed in his bones and sank into his marrow, and lust rose within him, the lust to kill gods and Titans, to pierce their hearts with his sword and to gorge on their blood, until he was the last man standing, more powerful than ever, wielding the flaming sword of vengeance as he rose from mud and gore. The sensation was so overwhelming that for a moment he _was_ in the midst of battle, crushing enemies to the ground, hacking their limbs off and grounding their bones to powder. Inside his mouth, the blood of War boiled. Inside his veins, it seethed and thundered, bursting through his skin in a fountain of destruction.

Aramis jerked his head back. Beneath him, the well of ichor gurgled softly.

“You shouldn’t have messed with Athos,” he growled.

“I’m giving him back what I stole from him,” Ares panted.

“What, his peace of mind?” Aramis’ voice dripped with sarcasm like his teeth dripped with blood.

“The glorious death.” Ares closed his eyes. His face was white, translucent even. “A warrior’s death. A hero’s death. Immortality took it away from him.” He opened his eyes again, but they were sightless and grey. “He’s earned it.”

Aramis snarled. With one last ferocious strike, he latched onto the neck of War and drank the bellicose poison like wine, intoxicated on the fumes of battle, on notions of honour and glory, on the ultimate sacrifice.

There was nothing there when he left off. War was a mere husk, desiccated and faded, bathed in the tentative yellow light of early morning sun. Gods didn’t die like humans. They vanished, and all that was left was an imprint of the idea that they had embodied. The scythe of Death stuck in the mattress, its blade clean and sharp enough to slice through a ray of light. Aramis pulled it out, handed it back to the skeleton woman whose cloak enveloped the bed like a shroud, and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

“Athos,” he whispered, while the din of war rang in his ears. “He gave him… a glorious death.”

The image of Athos, naked and tied to the bed, flashed in front of his eyes. He had been _stupid_. Aramis cursed, turned on his heel and dashed out of the room. A belt, a thin string of fabric, that was _nothing_. Not to a god, not to a man as determined to do the honourable thing as Athos. The thrall of War – Aramis felt it course through his own bloodstream and pound in his head. How much more powerful must it be in Athos, who had fed on Ares’ potency for millennia? Athos was powerless to resist his brother’s call. _Even unto death_ , Aramis’ brain supplied as he burst into their shared bedroom and saw the deserted bed.

He pressed his hand to his mouth and stood in mute agony. Then, he closed his eyes, turned his face upwards and muttered what might have been a prayer, and walked to the desk. He opened his rosewood casket, unlocked the hidden compartment and touched the object wrapped in a piece of silk with a reverent fingertip. He took it out, kissed it, and hung the finger of Athos around his neck, hiding it under his clothes.

Outside, the sky began to burn.

***

The black hole hung low above the waters, and Oceanus’ mercurial fingers strained upwards, towards the sky, as if the Titan of the waters strove to aid his brother in the sky. The world was bathed in the light of the devouring star.

“I believe the End is truly upon us,” Grimley said, serving drinks and dainty sandwiches on a silver plate. “Do have a morsel, Madame la duchesse,” he said, holding the tray under Marie’s nose. “The mortal body requires mortal sustenance.”

“What are you _doing_ , Grigori?” the Mother of God asked, eying the food and drinks with disgust. “Do you really think this is the time?”

“If we’re about to go out with a bang, your Celestial Majesty,” Grimley said, bowing with all the insolence of Grimaud, “we might as well have a bit of a party. Do try the salmon canapé, it is most delicious.”

“You should probably leave, Miriam,” Marie said and absentmindedly picked a champagne flute off the tray. “You have a paradise to go to. Whereas you,” she rounded on Grimley, eyes ablaze, “Should be ashamed of yourself. You realise that this is Athos out there, don’t you?”

“I do,” Grimley said and something in his face cracked. He stared at Marie’s furious face and then seized a drink, downed it with a swift flick of his wrist and smashed the glass on the flagstones. “To Kyrios!” For a moment, his face was as raw as his voice when he uttered these words, but in a flicker it was gone and Grimley looked quite himself again.

“What do I see, Anjou wine?” a cheerful voice boomed from the skies and everybody jumped. The golden chariot of Helios hovered behind them, its glow swallowed up by the aureole of the black hole. “Be a dear and hand me a glass or two. You didn’t happen to bring the bottle? Ah, shame. This’ll have to do.” The contents of the remaining glasses disappeared down his gullet, he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and pointed at his seething relative with the handle of his whip. “I see cuz is doing his thing,” he said. “I don’t know how he thinks he can meet my relatives eye to eye and not get eaten.” He scratched his own stomach with a contented grin. “But he was smart enough to take the goddess of my heart with him, she’ll know what to do.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Marie whispered, trying to simultaneously look at the burning sky and shade her eyes from its glare.

“I better go and see if everything is going to plan!” Porthos said. “See you later, my friends! If not in this world then in the next.” The whip cracked, the horses reared, and chariot of the Sun sped towards the black hole.

“This is not going to end well,” Vlad the Impaler whispered.

“You think?” Marie snorted.

“Where is Uncle Aramis? Why didn’t he do something?”

“I believe…” Miriam said, cleared her throat, and started again, “I believe he’s here.”

Everybody looked around. Clad in his long black cassock, his white face reflecting the flames, Aramis stood surrounded by shadows. His mouth was smiling and in his hand he carried a large axe.

“Oh dear,” Grimley said weakly. Then, he stepped smartly forward, his arm outstretched. “M. l’abbé, with your permission, I shall take the… implement. This is too crude an instrument to sully the hands of a gentleman and scholar like yourself.”

Aramis’ gaze shifted slowly to Grimley’s face. “Shut up, Jeeves,” he said. “And get out of my way, because I swear on the blood of the covenant that I will cut off your head and feed on your blood.”

Vlad groaned.

“I have something to discuss with Madame la duchesse,” Aramis said with the same icy calm of a glacier and stretched out his free hand. “Hurry, Madame. It is quite urgent.”

Miriam caught Marie by the arm, her eyes on Aramis, alert and wary. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“He won’t hurt me.” Marie shook off Miriam’s hand. “I know him. I trust him.” She was watching Aramis’ face as she talked, in the voice of a handler dealing with predator in distress.

Aramis’ mouth twitched. “That is correct,” he said softly. “I won’t hurt you. Come with me.” He offered his hand and she took it, falling into shadows as he pulled her back with him. A door slammed shut behind them, and Marie looked around. They were in the old armoury.

“Well, Marie,” Aramis began, as he propped the axe against his leg and began undoing the buttons of his priestly collar. “After all these years, you will get your wish.”

“What do you mean?” She looked young and pale and more at a loss than he’d ever seen her.

Aramis smiled again, the same brittle smile as before, and pulled her towards himself. He kissed her on the forehead. His collar fell open, exposing the white throat; the pulse at the base was racing. “You will cut my head off.”

The world spun. Gaia must’ve made a leap, because the ground beneath Marie’s feet trembled and she staggered. Aramis caught her and cradled her against his chest. “It’s all right,” he said into her hair. “You’re the one to do it. I trust you.”

“You _can’t_ ,” she said. “You can’t leave me.”

“I can’t stay,” he said simply. “Athos is dead.”

“He’s been dead before,” she pleaded. “Don’t… make me do this. Don’t do this!”

“Before, I could bring him back. Now, Olympus is gone.” Aramis tilted his head, rolled it back as if testing the strength of his own neck. “The axe is very sharp.” He picked it up and pressed the handle into her hand. “I will kneel here and put my head on this table, it’s a comfortable height.”

“I am not going to cut your head off!”

“Oh, but you are.” He smiled again. “Marie. My darling Marie. I loved you very much, do you know that? But-” he raised his face upwards with the same fixed smile. “This is the end.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

“It is. They won. We lost. Athos went and did the noble thing and,” a taut little twitch pulled at the corner of his mouth, “he’s left me behind.”

“Aramis, you are in shock,” Marie said.

“I will not be left behind.”

“We can think of something. We can make plans. Like we always did.”

“It’s too late.” He pulled his hair up, rubbed the nape of his neck. “This is the only plan that will work.”

“You can’t just give up like that.” Marie’s voice was thawing. The fragile edge was fading, she sounded more like herself. “You’ve lived so long. You always _lived_ , Aramis. Do not throw this away.”

“Athos lived longer than I did.”

“He wouldn’t want you to go like this.”

“I didn’t want him to go.”

“Aramis-”

“Marie,” he said, suddenly entirely business-like. “If you’re not going to do it, I will ask Grimley. He’ll be happy to oblige, and gleefully so. And if not Grimley, Vlad will. And _he_ is going to drink my blood, you won’t be able to stop him. I asked you, because I love you and I trust you and if anyone is going to put an end to my life, I want that someone to be you. You cannot save me by refusing.”

Marie stared at his white face, into the black eyes that burned with the fires of Hell. “All right,” she said. She took the axe from his hand. “I love you too,” she said in a small voice, and then she smiled. “I’m so glad I found you on the beach that day. My beautiful creature of the night.”

Aramis smiled back. He bowed with great friendship to the nymph. “You saved my life once,” he said. “It is yours to take.” He stepped to the table, knelt down and laid his head upon it. His hair spilled on the worn wood in black tendrils.

Marie touched one of the silky locks with her fingertips. “It’s a shame to cut it off.”

“It’s ruined anyway,” Aramis said. “Everything’s ruined.”

“I’ve never seen you give up.” Marie’s fingers rested gently against his cheekbone.

“Do it,” Aramis said. “Or I will order Grimley to do it.”

Marie took a step back and raised the axe.

“Do not bury me,” Aramis said and closed his eyes.

She smiled. “I will give you to the nymphs.” The axe glinted and fell. “Adieu, chéri.”

***

I remembered grasping Hera’s arm as my black wings beat against the lavender sky. 

“I’ll give her to you if you promise to lay down your arms against me and my friends!” I shouted. Next to me, Hera put on an excellent show of playing the terrorized victim. Andromeda herself had not looked so horrified facing Cetus.

I remembered being airborne, Hera’s long hair tickling my neck as she whispered, “You’ll find his heart by the beating sound of it. We could always hear it when I lived inside him in my early years.”

I remembered shaking Hera awake, “Now is the time, we must hurry,” after slipping the belt with which Aramis had bound me off my wrists. 

I did not remember Aramis leaving our bed, for he was not there when I opened my eyes, and I had very little doubt he'd snuck off to do something I would disapprove of were I to tarry any longer. Perhaps it was better this way, to part without saying farewell. We were never any good at our goodbyes. If my heart could still break, it would have.

“Just open wide, and I’ll chuck her right in!” I shouted up to the Titan of the Harvest as he towered before me, while Hera and I floated in mid-air, wrinkling our noses from the malodorous vapours of his breath. And then he yawned, opening his giant maw.

“My blessing goes with you, son of Eirene,” Hera’s fingers squeezed mine as I let go of her hand and spread my wings, hurtling myself in between Kronos’ gaping jaws.

The Titan had sensed that he’d been duped and attempted to cough me back out while I hung on the precipice of his gullet, grasping onto his dangling uvula. Hera had also given me a golden lasso, which I hastened to fasten to whatever it was that passed for a molar in the mouth of a primordial entity, and began to lower myself into the darkness of Kronos’ throat. In that abyss, a beat of an ancient drum guided me. _Thump-thump, thump-thump._ My hand grasped the labrys from behind my back, ready to hack my way towards the source of the sound. It was close, it vibrated through my bones, like another call of centuries before. _To battle Achaeans!_ Once more into the fray then.

I had lightning in my fingertips and the thought that I’d been giving granddad a bit of indigestion before the last hoorah rather tickled my fancy. I remembered the pulse of Kronos’ heart as it pounded against my back, the tolling of the bell informing me that my journey was at an end. I lifted the double-bladed ax and brought it down over my head, hacking through the viscera, until I saw it sunken into the beating flesh that parted like a cracked pomegranate and glowed beneath the blow.

I did not remember dying this time.

I awoke with a start, the greaves of my armor digging into my flesh as I scrambled up and onto my feet. The dimly lit cavernous space greeted me as an old friend, and I shook the ancient sands from my palms smiling at the memory of the time I had spent on this very shore. Before my gaze, the placid waters of the Lethe stretched out towards oblivion, calm and breathless like the dead. 

“I’m home,” I said, eyes scanning the space for the boatman. All I saw was an abandoned oar lying in the sand. The ferry floated lightly off to the side, tethered to the shore by a gilded rope. “Charon?” I called out in vain. My call would not be answered. This was the path the Titans would have taken when they broke free of Tartarus. The disaster they left in their wake was only too known to me.

A soft moan startled me and I turned towards the sound, stumbling through the darkness until I nearly tripped over a body lying prone at my feet. Another moan floated up from beneath my feet like vapor and that voice sent shivers up my spine. Trembling, I sank to my knees and cupped his face with both my hands.

“Aramis..,” I whispered. “You’re _here_ ,” escaped my lips in an anguished groan. I pulled his body into my lap, cradling his head as it lulled against my shoulder. “I’ve got you,” I whispered against his hair, kissing his brow. “Open your eyes, my love.”

His fingers caught in my breastplate, then clenched, as if attempting to pull himself out of the tenebrous deep. “Athos,” he spoke, “I found you.”

“You followed me here,” my lamentation tumbled forth even as I pressed my lips against his eyelids, his nose, his lips. “What have you done, my beautiful chyortik?”

“I will always follow you,” he smiled into my kiss. “Even unto death. Have you forgotten?”

“No, my love, never.”

His arms wrapped around my neck and I pressed my face against his, clinging to him as if he were a phantom, likely to disappear into the Erebus.

“You’re coming with me,” I stated, pulling him up and supporting his body while he got his bearings.

“Where?” 

“Elysium.”

“I don’t have coin… and I do not see the ferryman,” he pointed out, making the same discovery as I did moments prior.

“We don’t need him,” I stated with certainty. “I know the way. Been there enough times.” I shrugged to cover my trepidation. “You’re _here_ ,” I repeated in disbelief.

“Where did you expect me to go upon my death? Hell?” he teased with a lopsided smirk.

“Well…”

“I was given a choice,” he said. “I chose you.” My expression must not have been one of much reassurance because he felt compelled to add, “I will _always_ choose you, surely you must know that by now.”

“If I ever doubted it, forgive me,” I pleaded, reaching out my hand to take his. “Come with me, my angel. Let me take you to Paradise.”

He sat behind me on the seat that I had occupied several times in the past, while I stood at the helm and used the long oar to push the ferry off the bottom of the River of Forgetfulness. The waters below us teamed with the souls of those who fell in the Titan War. Their hands reached out towards us in an eternally silent supplication. I steered the boat down the delta to the passageway that used to lead past Cerberus, whose remains were now nothing but a heap of bones and three empty skulls. 

“Athos,” he called to me but I was afraid to look back, lest like Eurydice he be taken from me. “Must we drink the waters before going in?”

My oar struck the opposite bank, pulling the ferry in until it was easy enough to jump out, which I did, tugging the boat onto the sandy shore until it was safely docked before a giant gate. Beyond it, Hades and Persephone dwelled no more. 

I extended my arm to help him from the boat and was rewarded with a sly grin before he put his hand into mine. At last, I held him in my arms again. Had I still a heart it would beat like a hummingbird within my breast. 

“There is no one here to force us to drink it now, it would seem,” I finally replied. “Is that what you want?” I asked. “To remember?”

“I don’t want to forget a single moment,” he said, his eyes shining like stars on a clear, dark night. I reeled him in again and sucked his bottom lip between my own, tasting the essence of his soul the way I had loved tasting his corporeal essence. It pulsed against me like a lapping wave and shimmered at my touch, lighting my own soul aflame, as if a thousand fireflies swirled all around us.

“Come with me into the land of demigods and heroes, Aramis,” I said, clasping his hand in mine. 

“Always,” he echoed as we pushed open the gates of Elysium. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the End of the End of Days. Let us hang our heads in contemplation.


End file.
